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Stage 8 was great for viewing except for the many in number but few in percentage fans, who ran for their own glory and fifteen seconds of fame. At times times these selfans impeded the cyclists, it seemed.

The time trial seemed like it might be the only way to shake things up, and that it did, with some doubt by the end of the day whether Levi Leipheimer might be passed in the overall (GC, general classification) by David Zabriske, the USA road Time Trial champ.

Stage 6 Time Trial Top 20

Stage 5 was another good one, but I wasn't able to catch it all. I did see Cavendish win again, this time just a bit further ahead than the day before, giving him more time to mug for the cams. 

Tour of California Stage 4 Merced to Clovis
The sun finally came out on the Tour of California in Stage 4, and so did the idiots. In fact, at one point on the final climb, an imbicile with a sharp implement meant to be some sort of devil's pitchfork too a head full of snow after one of the cyclists (purported to be Lance himself) was close enough to push him and his sharp tipped stick into the bank.

Wow. Really great stuff and sorry to be late on this with the Eddy workshop and guests coming to town, but over time, free internet video and the Tour de Georgia are both getting cooler. As I had to keep telling myself last weekend, I can't leave town right now with lots to do and some of it requiring me to be here, so I will have to enjoy this opportunity from afar it seems. If anyone thinks they want to get a carpool together later in the week, let me know (I know I'm dreamin').

Warning: silly post!

 

Deciding to do A2A was a very last minute decision. I kept hitting the website, read numerous stories and had a lot of friends tell me how hard it was! The more everyone told me how difficult it was, the more I wanted to do it.

 

Oh. Buzz buzz buzz buzz, 4:30 a.m. came so quickly after taking so long to arrive.

We got our jolt of hot water and I pondered whether to do some coffee or not. I think I decided not to, and that it would perhaps upset my stomach.

Here's a map for the Athens to Atlanta Roadskate A2A 2007. While writing my 2007 A2A review, I just couldn't resist looking at a few things in satellite and hybrid views. It was also interesting to see a different version of the elevation profile. Check it out! Make sure to view the map in mapmyride, as you'll have more options, such as hybrid view and elevation map view. Hope you love it! Skateylove, roadskater.

[Editor's note: I posted this for Jim after he sent the info at my request. I wanted this story to be in the 2007 A2A Journals collection we are building!]

After the Athens to Atlanta skate this year, the Herbsts, a couple who skated the 52 mile distance wanted to know more about the granddad-grandson team who skated the full 87 mile distance.  Here's what I wrote.  My wife and daughter-in-law took pictures at the rest stops and at the finish.   I've included those also.

This book is for adding your story to this 2007 chapter of the Athens to Atlanta History Project. Add it yourself using the Outline tab while editing to select "2007 A2A Journals" as the parent of your article, or don't worry about it and I'll gather it all up later. If your story is for another year which does not exist yet in our book, please contact me or leave it be and I will add a chapter for that year. Please add your stories from previous years as well. Skateylove and thanks. We hope you enjoy our Athens to Atlanta Roadskate stories!

Saturday broke late and fuzzy, thank goodness, and it was likely eleven a.m. before verticalizing. I went to the computer for some reason and eebee helped a great deal with finding a place to get the window fixed. We decided we'd be too nervous to leave the car unrepaired at the hotel and in the city garage, as we'd need to leave some little something most likely no matter how we tried to plan.

After Rolling in Randolph's 50 very hilly miles, I knew I had better get some last minute work in on my skate boots (more on this later). After some smoothing with stone grinding bits, I used marine epoxy and black silicone to do the best I could to put my old Verduccis back in shape...a reasonably smooth footbed shape, that is. Once I finshed that, or thought I had, I set my mind to another obsession...decorating my skate frames.

Here's my video from Athens to Atlanta 2007. For best results you may want to turn the sound off and go make some coffee, or pause the video while it loads for awhile. Once it has played to the end, subsequent plays should be glitch-free. I'd like to hear what system (win/lin/mac) and browser (ie/ff/op/saf/etc.) you are using and whether it worked for you. I hope you like it enough to leave a comment!

The Athens to Atlanta Roadskate took place on October 7, 2007, and it was a warm day especially for those not in the lead group. Temperatures in the upper 60s even an hour and a half into the event quickly rose from 70 at 9 am to 80 in ATL by 1 pm, five and a half hours along. For those finishing later, temps rose to 82 and stayed there until all finishers were through.

Check out my photos here:

Arriving to 50 degrees in Duluth on Friday was quite a change to the 90 degrees weather in North Carolina... Luckily, the Internet world was buzzing with the forecast of chilly weather for a while and I was fairly ready to cope with it. Still, it’s been a while since I have skated in a 30 degrees weather and I was not sure about several things, the biggest of them all – wheels.

During a weekend full of fun and necessary preparations for the Tour to Tanglewood next week, plus with some birthday cake and 28 miles of skating loops at Greensboro Country Park on Saturday, we ended up back out at the park on Sunday afternoon for the Pro/1/2, Women's Open and the start of the Senior Cat 3 bicycle races. We walked the 1.65 mile loop in the opposite direction of the racers and took photos as we ambled along.

In addition to bringing the world the awesome http://speedskateworld.com website, Peter Doucet is busy representing Canada and inline skating at the Pan Am Games in Brazil. Peter placed 9th overall in the combined, 11th in the 20K elimination race and 9th in the 10K points race. Congratulations, Peter. That box of wheels must have come in handy! (See Peter's photos from the Montreal 24-Hour inline skate.)

References:

On Sunday June 10^th, I pack up my gear and start driving north to Spartanburg, SC to tackle the 32^nd Annual Assault on Mt Mitchell. This is a 102-mile ride from Spartanburg, SC to the top of Mt Mitchell, NC with 12,000+ ft of climbing. This will be my third time talking this beast and I feel ready for the task at hand.

Whilst snooping around the personal finance and get-out-of-debt blogs, I tapped into the personal weight-loss blogs. In following the ADHD links to the maze of other such webpages, I found some funny blog titles, like "Over 40, in debt and overweight". Yes, in 2007 there are countless people still struggling in vain to lose excess weight. They all seem to believe that food deprivation and other people's idea of exercise are the only solutions. Will this hopelessly cruel and debilitating cycle ever end?

If you need a break, no, I mean a brake, perhaps Cado Motus has what you need.  The former Mogema company has a brake that's supposed to work with 80mm-to-110mm-wheel frames.  Personally, I haven't seen one of these yet, but on www.nettracing.com there are pictures with installation instructions.

With the State Games of North Carolina bike events (mountain biking and road cycling criterium) being held in Greensboro Country Park in 2007, I was looking forward to a weekend of less training, just walking around the park watching cyclists of all sorts and ages reach their limits in search of some North Carolina glory. However, it didn't work out that way as I decided to spend all day Saturday skating on the American Tobacco Trail, which led me to sleep in on Sunday, not even hearing my alarm.

We saw more guys out today in skinsuits and on bikes than usual, and I wondered what was up. The funny thing was there were road and mtb types, and some of them seemed to be checking out particular parts of the course with special attention. I forgot all of this until I started looking at ride calendars for the weekend, and in addition to Blood, Sweat and Gears (50 mile/100 mile) in the mountains, I found out that the State Games of NC take place in Greensboro Country Park this weekend.

Thanks to a little extra encouragement from the Tour de Kale organizers when I was skating at Tour de Lions, and to the great feedback we had from other who had done the event, we decided to go this year despite our excuses. We're glad we did.

On Monday, I went to see the finish of the 102-mile, 11,000-foot-elevation-gain road cycling challenge, the Assault on Mt. Mitchell. It was great fun to watch someone else suffer for a change, and I have to say it was impressive to know what these cyclists had been through just in the last 30 miles from Marion, NC to Mount Mitchell State Park. That's after completing the first 72 miles from Spartanburg, SC!

Skate of the Union half marathon was my second outdoor race of the season. The race was held at a police driving training course and had one of the best surfaces I have ever skated on. It was such a smooth blacktop that my green Matters felt just a little bit too soft for it.

 I've been knocking these rather trivial, large-scale thoughts around my head for some years now and wanted to write something about them. Last night, whilst watching 20/20, was the final straw! This post might complement KJG's questions in Monotony of Training.

It looks like a blast and I wish I could have been there. I found some photos and think I see Artem in some of them, but wasn't sure as I didn't know if he was going to this event...

http://sports.webshots.com/photo/2578809320054477580GGhCtF

I saw pics of Brian and Andrea, too.

And I love this one of deep, meaningful tunes in front of the porta-potties: