Derek's 1999 Trading Card

An early master of the lookaway

FOPCAT leads Tour of California

I just found out that (somewhat accidentally) I'm on the Tour of California website as the Strava Record holder for Coleman Valley Road on Stage 5. Check it out at:

http://www.amgentourofcalifornia.com/Route/stages/stage5.html

- Mark

Spu and I did some hurtin' on Sunday at the Santa Cruz Criterium.

Here's a video of the last three laps. This is a hard race of attrition, and I was pleased to be there at the finish. A teammate gave a nice leadout that put me in perfect position through the final corner. Unfortunately, I was spent, and it was all backwards from there.

Photos for the Friday Contest

Sorry, some of you seem to be unable to view the photos that I sent for the Friday contest. Here they are - good luck. The question - what is the cycling significance of this location?

Update as of April 11: It's the Campagnolo factory in Vincenza. I guess this was just too easy. An industrial building in Italy - what else is it likely to be? And the last person to win Paris-Roubaix on his first attempt was Bernard Hinault - well done, Geoff Silberman!

What I'm Bringing

That's a 34x28. Choose wisely.

Good writing and an interesting idea

Gang - What a great day of riding and racing in Sonoma yesterday. Tom Dillon's third place was impressive. I read two interesting things yesterday - check out Cycle Sport's wonderful race account of the Tour of Flanders.

Also, the excellent Competitive Cyclist blog puts forward an intriguing idea - road biking innovation follows mountain biking innovation. If so, look for disc brakes, single-chainring road bikes (I'm a pioneer on this one, riding a single 44x11-32 on one of my bikes) and front though-axles.

Spumoni and I had some good fun and good results at today's Apple Pie Criterium in Santa Rosa. A short video of the last lap of the cat3 race is below. Between a prior race and an extra training ride, Spu already had 50 miles in his legs before this race. Still, he was looking good, and he dragged me to the front with a few laps to go!