Cycling and Outdoor Gear

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Tags: endurance racing, Lance Armstrong, Leadville 100, mountain biking
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Kids on Bikes Fundraiser Rides and Fun This Weekend

September 21st, 2010

Kids on Bikes is a great local organization that helps kids earn a bike. Paige Carmichael, Chris Carmichael’s wife, started Kids on Bikes to help provide solutions to rising childhood obesity rates and highlight the benefits of physical activity for children. Paige believes every child deserves to experience the joy, freedom, and confidence of owning a bike. My kids enjoyed the kids race that had at the 24 Hours of Colorado Springs last weekend.

Kids on Bikes is hosting their first annual fundraising ride this Saturday at the Air Force Academy. There will be three ride options (4 mile family, 16 mile, and 24 mile routes) on the Santa Fe Trail. After the rides, there will be a picnic and Kids Zone. The Kids Zone will have: bike decorating station, bounce house, face painting, balloon animals, carnival games, the Chick-Fil-A Cow, bubbles, snow cone machine, and more!

All proceeds from the ride will help Kids on Bikes to bring joy one bike at a time to children in the Pikes Peak Region. Pledges collected will help sponsor fifth grade students in low-income school districts to earn bikes by reaching academic, behavior, and character development goals in their ABC’s Program.

The 2 longer ride options cost $25 dollars per person plus require $25 minimum in pledges. The 4 mile family ride is $50 for the entire family. No pledges are required for the family ride but pledges can be collected to be eligible for prizes. Online registration ends Thursday evening but there will also be registration at the Air Force Academy on Saturday morning.

Pledge Prizes:

$25 KOB cycling socks ~ $50 KOB baseball hat ~ $75 KOB t-shirt ~ $100 KOB signature cycling jersey ~ over $100 enters you into drawings for fabulous prizes including a new bike and Lance Armstrong signed jersey

Check the Kids on Bikes site for more information.

Luncheon with Linda Armstrong Kelly

In addition to this weekend’s rides, Kids on Bikes is having a luncheon with Linda Armstrong Kelly, Lance Armstrongs mom, next Tuesday, September 28th. Linda will serve as the keynote speaker for the luncheon and local cycling legend Chris Carmichael will also be in attendance as a special guest to introduce Linda. Linda will be discussing the tools she gave Lance, to succeed and the opportunity his bike provided.

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Tags: Air Force Academy, Bike, Colorado Springs, Kids on Bikes, Lance Armstrong
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Make Leadville 100 Prediction, Win T-Shirt

August 13th, 2010

I’m up at Leadville today getting ready for the Leadville 100. Guess the winner and their finish time and if you pick the winner and are closest to their time you’ll win an UltraRob.com t-shirt. Although Lance Armstrong has said he won’t race there’s plenty of other potential winners to pick from. Some of them are Dave Wiens, Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski, Levi Leipheimer, Matt Shriver, Jeremiah Bishop, Todd Wells and Alban Lakata and here’s the complete Leadville 100 entrant list.

You can also win a t-shirt for predicting at what mile I drop out or what my finish time is. Here are some hints on guessing my time. I weigh 50 lbs more than when I finished in 8:18 in 2003. I’m also even 20 lbs heavier than when I did 11:21 in 2008. I started training earlier this year than the 4th of July like I did 2 years ago but my fitness was really slow coming around.

To win a t-shirt, you must submit your guess by tomorrow’s 6:30 AM start time.

– UltraRob

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Tags: Dave Wiens, giveaway, Lance Armstrong, Leadville 100, Levi Leipheimer, mountain biking
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Weekend in Leadville

August 9th, 2010

This weekend we went camping near Leadville at 11,000 feet. With the Leadville 100 this weekend, I wanted to spend some more time at altitude. A couple weeks ago, I slept in the back of our van at 11,700 feet and I’ve done a few rides at altitude this summer but I don’t think I’ve spent as much time at altitude as normal.

I had also replaced several worn out parts on my bike plus switched to new tires so I wanted to give them a try on the Leadville 100 course. I rode most of what I wanted to see of the Leadville 100 course when I was there a couple weeks ago but I didn’t ride Powerline. Since I’ve been sick and didn’t want to push it, I had my wife drop me off at Carter Summit. I rode from there around the back side of Turquoise Lake, up Sugarloaf, down Powerline and over to the Fish Hatchery.

Just after I hit the pavement after Powerline, I saw Lance Armstrong, Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski and someone else I didn’t recognize coming toward me. I looked back and saw they stopped at some vehicles so I turned around. Lance was friendly and let me take a photo with him. He said this week was really busy for him so he would decide this week for sure whether he’s racing. He also said it’s been a while since he’s been fast. JHK said it was a really tough course but it sounded like he’ll be bringing his A game.

Since it was Boom Days in Leadville we checked it out. It seemed to be mainly booths selling trinket stuff but there were some mining competitions. I would liked to have seen them doing the rock drilling but when we were there they were just seeing how fast someone could fill an ore cart with gravel.

Sunday morning was the burro races. We didn’t stick around for them to come back to town. They had a few burros that they were letting people race for about a block and back. My girls wanted to do it. The 5 year old was very disappointed because they wouldn’t let her do it because she just had flip flops. They let my 7 year old do it but I had to do it with her. Normally I avoid running but it was fun pulling a burro down the street and we won our group.

[View with PicLens]

– UltraRob

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Lance Armstrong and Gov. Ritter at Quiznos Pro Challenge Press Conference

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Tags: camping, Lance Armstrong, Leadville, Leadville 100, mountain biking
Posted in Mountain Bike, outdoors | 2 Comments »

Colorado Pro Stage Race Announced

August 4th, 2010

Lance Armstrong has teamed with Quiznos to bring an international pro-cycling stage race to Colorado next summer, according to the Associated Press. The Quiznos Pro Challenge will take place Aug. 22-28, 2001 on a course that hasn’t been mapped yet.

Armstrong and Gov. Bill Ritter made the announcement Wednesday, saying the race would run through Denver, either at the start or finish, and will probably include other Front Range cities and towns. There will be an emphasis on racing in the tough Colorado mountains.

The race will be the first pro event in Colorado since the Coors Classic, which ran from 1979-1988. Armstrong said the dates were chosen so it could fit between the Tour de France and the Spanish Vuelta. After the announcement Wednesday morning, Armstrong, Ridder and about 2,000 riders joined for a bike ride through down town Denver.

Lance wouldn’t commit to racing the Quiznos Pro Challenge although he said he’d like to do some US races next year even though his European racing is over.

– Deb Acord

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2010 Leadville 100 MTB Entrant List

July 25th, 2010

The 2010 Leadville 100 mountain bike entrant list has been posted. Once again they allowed more racers this year. There are 1557 entrants but I heard they received over 10,000 entries.

Lance Armstrong and Dave Wiens are to be back. Other cycling stars such as Levi Leipheimer, Tinker Juarez, Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski, Ned Overend and Rebecca Rusch are on the list.

A big change for this year is that only the top 100 from last year have their bib number the same as their finishing place the year before. In the past it was easy to look at others numbers and get a feel for how well you were doing.

It’s only 3 weeks until the Leadville 100 and only in the last couple weeks has my fitness gotten to the point that I have been able to get in good, long rides. I’ve been struggling with my weight the last few years and I’m even more overweight this year. It’s going to be tough for me to get a finish this year but I’ll line up and see what happens.

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Tags: Colorado, Dave Wiens, Lance Armstrong, Leadville 100, mountain biking
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Is Traffic Furniture Making the Tour de France Dangerous?

July 13th, 2010

The first week of racing at the Tour de France has left the peloton battered and bandaged. It has left some people wondering if the course has been too dangerous. I don’t remember where but I did read one article that said it was just bike racing and it hasn’t been that bad. Chris Carmichael and Greg Lemond have both written that it was a rough week.

Lance Armstrong has had particularly bad luck in this year’s Tour. He lost nearly 12 minutes after crashes in Sunday’s stage. Honestly though I’m more surprised that he won 7 consecutive Tours without any bad crashes or getting sick. With 3 weeks of racing for each one, that’s nearly half a year without an illness at the wrong time. It did seem he had stomach ailments one year and sat in on some flat stages.

In Carmichael’s article, he talks about some of the reasons why there may be more crashes now and why there are more broken bones. One the reasons he talks about is more “traffic furniture”. He says, “the small towns and cities throughout Europe have been steadily placing roundabouts, speed bumps, chicanes, and narrowed sections of road in place in order to slow down traffic.” Not only do they increase the chance of a crash but can make for a harder landing.

Hopefully now that Lance is out of GC contention, he’ll go for some stage wins and make for some interesting racing. He has also said he’ll ride for Levi Leipheimer. There’s still plenty of exciting racing left no matter what Lance does.

– UltraRob

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Disappointed with Floyd Landis

May 20th, 2010

In an interview with ESPN, Floyd Landis confirmed that emails the WSJ obtained to cycling officials and sponsors admitting to doping during his cycling career were his. He was stripped of his 2006 Tour de France title after testing positive for synthetic testosterone. He still says that he didn’t take synthetic testosterone in the 2006 Tour de France. There was sloppy lab work but after spending $2 million he still lost his doping case.

Not only did Landis, admit to doping but accuses Lance Armstrong, Levi Leipheimer, Dave Zabriskie and other top American cyclists of also doping. I’ve long believed that most if not all top Pro cyclist are doping to some extent so I don’t find his accusations surprising. The thing is he says he doesn’t have any evidence to prove they did.

It’s one thing if he wants to clear his conscience of what he did. It seems like he’s trying to get back at others with his accusations.

– UltraRob

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More On Leadville 100 Felony Charges

May 13th, 2010

The news about Katie Brazelton giving her Leadville 100 entry to Wendy Lyall and both of them being charged with criminal impersonation has spread outside of the mountain bike world. There a good post on the Ex-Pat Ex-Lawyer blog with what lead up to the charges.

In a letter to the Lake County Sheriff, Leadville 100 organizer Ken Chlouber asked for prosecution on theft of services for the $250 in race fees, $225 in awards, plus racer services, including aid stations, security, and a pre-race banquet. That would be much less severe than the criminal impersonation felony that DA Hurlbert charged them with. It seems that Katie Brazelton may have already lost her job over the incident.

As I said I think that cheating to get into the race is serious but worse in this case because of Wendy finishing 2nd in Katie’s age group. Still being charged with a felony is overblown for something like this.

Some people are complaining that Ken doesn’t enforce his rules consistently. We own an old mining claim in Lake County close to Leadville and we always say it’s still the wild, wild west there. It’s not just that Ken runs the Leadville 100 that way. Even so about 10 times as many people wanted to do the race this year as are allowed in.

The Leadville 100 entry lottery isn’t totally a lottery. Some number of riders appear to get picked and the rest get drawn in the lottery. I know riders that have used a friend’s address in Leadville so they’d get picked. Leadville is small enough that Ken and whoever else does the preferred picking probably know when that is the case but the riders have still gotten into the race.

– UltraRob

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Team RadioShack Twitpic photo

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Tags: Katie Brazelton, Lance Armstrong, Leadville 100, Mark Hurlbert, Mountain Bike, Wendy Lyall
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New Team RadioShack Jerseys

January 15th, 2010

I had posted on twitter when the first RadioShack jersey was modeled by Lance Armstrong that it looked old and outdated just like RadioShack. Since then the Team RadioShack jerseys have been refined.

Although they’ve kept the same general look to the jerseys, I think they have look much better than the original one. They don’t have such a cold, industrial look from the past.

2010 seems to be the year of the ugly cycling jerseys. Although I’ll now give the Team RadioShack jerseys a passing grade, there’s no way I’ll give the Footon-Servetto-Fuji team jerseys a passing grade.

– UltraRob

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