Steamboat Springs, Colorado - Rocky Peak Productions announces the Kent Eriksen Tour de Steamboat Century Ride. In its 4th year we join forces with Prudential Steamboat Realty to raise money for the Sunshine Kids Foundation. Along with the benefit two new routes (40 and 20 miles) were added to the existing 110 mile ride as well as a family oriented core-trail route.

“We are really excited about our new partnership with the Sunshine Kids and Prudential Steamboat Realty,” said co-director Katie Lindquist. “The ride grew in its first couple of years to a point where we have the numbers to make this ride a real benefit to a deserving group of young individuals, The Sunshine Kids.”

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Karl and Alex from Silicon Valley Cycling Center give a brief introduction to the three most popular power meters on the market. In Part 1, Karl goes over the pro peleton favorite SRM PowerMeter.

Stay tuned for Part 2, where Karl will be going over the features and benefits of the CycleOps PowerTap 2.4SL!

We all have different Ideas on winter training, for some it is a vital time of year, laying the foundation for a big race mid summer or tuning speed for the early season duathlons. For some, winter will be a success if they gain less than 10 pounds. What ever your motivations for this winter; balancing a structured plan with a good dose of spontaneity will get you in the best form ever, physically and mentally.

Outlook:
If you live in the northeast or anywhere that snows in the winter, and your not a pro, you simply can’t train as much in the winter. With darkness coming around 4:30pm, fridged morning temps and icy roads it just not possible. We won’t even get into jobs, girl friends, kids, wives, the patriots game schedule, etc…

So now that we are at peace with the fact that we simply can’t put in as much time as we may want, We can focus on what to do with the time we have.

Getting start:
Find a routine. With cold temps, warm beds and stale indoor air it is easy to get “off track”. Try to find some kind of routine. This could be 1 workout or rendezvous with a friend per week. ie. “every Wednesday morning john and I run together, no matter what.” “Thursday night I do the spinning class at my gym.” Even with only one appointment per week with your body you can maintain your fitness. Find something that works with your schedule so it will be easy to keep this apt and not get side tracked.

This can work for you in a great way if this one work out focuses on your weakness. I have known athletes to turn there swim that puts them 5 minutes down to 1 minute up, over the course of the winter!

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Rock Racing Tops On-Line Poll As Most Popular Pro Team

Los Angeles, CA – A poll on Bicycling.com reveals Rock Racing has quickly pulled away from the pack to become the most popular team in pro cycling.

Nearly 60 percent of the respondents (9,500+) voted for Rock Racing in response to the question, “What pro cycling team will you be rooting for this year?” More than 16,500 votes were cast through midday Monday in an unscientific poll posted on the website of Bicycling magazine.

Last month at the Amgen Tour of California, Rock Racing’s booth at the health and fitness expo was consistently packed with fans clamoring for autographs and team merchandise. The team’s official website, rockracing.com, also received more than 6.8 million hits during the eight-day race.

Rock Racing Team Owner Michael Ball said those facts and figures – combined with the results of Bicycling Magazine’s poll – leave him wondering if fans are being shortchanged by the team’s exclusion from the Tour de Georgia next month.

“I set out to create a cycling team that fans could root for and be a part of that was unlike any other pro team,” Ball said. “It’s unfortunate that fans will not have the opportunity to cheer on the riders and team they enjoy the most.”

High Road Sports was second in the voting with 19 percent, followed by Team Slipstream-Chipotle presented by H30 with 12 percent. Astana, the team with 2007 Tour de France winner Alberto Contador and current U.S. national road race champion Levi Leipheimer, garnered seven percent of the vote. None of the other four teams in the poll had more than two percent.

Cycling fans in Southern California will be able to see the Rock Racing team in action later this week at the San Dimas Stage Race, March 28-30, and again at the Redlands Bicycle Classic, April 3-6.

Henk Vogels doubles up with a pair of victories in Colorado,
Ivan Stevic returns to racing with a 2nd place finish

After a late spring snow storm dusted Boulder, Colorado Saturday evening, it was a bright and sunny Easter Sunday for the 100-man field toeing the line for the 60-minute Colorado University Research Park Criterium. With a number of local pros on hand, the pace was fast from the start. Toyota-United used their strength in numbers to establish the winning break in the opening 25 minutes.

The five-man break consisted of Toyota-United’s Henk Vogels, Ivan Stevic and Justin England along with Frank Pipp (HealthNet) and Michael Cody (Jelly Belly). With 15 minutes remaining, Toyota-United’s Ben Day and Tom Zirbel (Bissell) jumped from the peloton, but only Day was able to bridge up to the break. The break only had an advantage of 10-20 seconds that shrunk to within eight seconds on the final lap. Vogels launched his sprint with 500 meters to go and Stevic, in his season debut, came around Cody to score the top two podium positions. Finishing off an outstanding day for Toyota-United, Jonny Clarke took the field sprint for 7th place.

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To paraphrase Jules Dassin’s movie, Naked City, there are million stories in the peloton. This is one of them.

Bissell Pro Cycling Team rider João Miguel da Silva Correia started racing at the tender age of six in his native Portugal. After moving to the United States with his family at the age of eleven, he continued racing, representing his country at the Junior World Championships in 92 and 93, and he went on to race professionally in Europe for Portuguese and Dutch teams. But in 1996, Correia stopped racing.

It all started with a bet. About a year and half ago, Correia carrying 190 pounds on his 5′9” frame was riding his bike in New York City.

“One of my clients saw me ride and ask ‘did you ever race?’ and I said ‘yeah, I used to race on a Portuguese pro team, I say that a lot but nobody really cares’, and he said ‘yeah, you can tell because of the pedaling, you can tell when a guy is a former rider’. He says ‘ how old are you?’, and I say ‘well, I’m 30 now’, and he says ‘well you can probably still get back into good shape’ so we made a bet.”

Correia started to do local races, and decided to prepare for the local races by doing national races, and did pretty well on his first race. He then started working with Dr Max Testa and Nanna Meyer to improve his form.

“I kept losing the weight, and then I did some races for Priority Health as a guest rider last year and this year they (Bissell) had an extra spot, and they called me and asked if I was interested and I said ‘yeah, who wouldn’t be’.”

And the weight came off, slowly. “The first 15 (pounds) just weren’t coming off really, and then they started coming off and then I just kept doing the right things with training, with nutrition. It really wasn’t focusing on so much weight loss but really just changing the way that I ate and the way that I rode, and it sort of just came off.”

It takes a long time to get back into shape. The first year, Correia focused on losing the weight while ensuring that the muscle fibers were building up, and that there were no joint problems with the knees.
Holding back was a challenge.

“A very close friend of mine who also works in New York City, a former junior World Champion from 2004, Miguel Morras from Spain. It’s funny we used to race together when we were kids and now we live in the same city, but you know, he also is doing the same thing I did because he had a bad accident in the mid 90s, but then he ended with new problems because the first year he was going so hard you know so the first year, I had to sort of just follow the wheels and let my body slowly acclimate. “

Last year, he pushed a little harder, with a focus on 2008. “This is the year that I’m really focusing on doing well and hopefully National Championships in the time trial are very important to me and hopefully going to the Olympics for the time trial, that’s my big goal. “

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American Classic 420 Wheelset
Description:

Model: 420 Black Bladed with ceramic bearings.
Weight: 1530 grams
MSRP: 420 with bladed spokes is $949 wheels + $199 ceramic bearings
Total: $1148

The 420 is the best selling product of the American Classic line up. They have lighter wheel sets and stronger wheel sets but none achieve the balance that the 420 has. It has a medium depth rim at 34 mm. And it has decent weight at 1530 grams. The lateral stiffness is excellent and the ride is pretty comfortable.

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Los Angeles, CA – What was supposed to be a routine training ride for Team Type 1’s Matt Wilson instead resulted in a broken wrist that will keep the former Australian national road champion out of competition for a couple of weeks.

Wilson was training last Wednesday on the Pacific Coast Highway with Toyota-United’s Heath Blackgrove and Hilton Clarke when a slow-speed crash occurred.

“We were coming up to an intersection and I didn’t see the guy in front of me stop and my bike went straight into him,” Wilson said. “It was a stupid nothing crash. I hit the ground at a bad angle and just broke it.”

Wilson will undergo surgery on his right wrist Tuesday. Once the swelling goes down, the 29-year-old hopes to get back on the bike, riding on a trainer.

“It was a huge disappointment for me,” Wilson said. “My training was going well and I was looking forward to San Dimas and Redlands and doing something straight off.”

In January, Wilson won a stage of the Jayco Bay Cycling Classic in Australia on the way to a sixth place finish overall. Last month, he finished 10th at the Tour of Langkawi while helping Team Type 1 to a runner-up placing on the team classification.

“We were pretty excited about the performance of the team in Malaysia and Taiwan and were looking forward to having some more good results,” Team Type 1 Sport Director Ed Beamon said. “So not having Matt for San Dimas and Redlands is a bit of a stunner.

“But we’re hoping to have him back for the Tour de Georgia. If he can at least manage the pain, he should be good and definitely be a factor for Georgia.”

Wilson knows a thing or two about speedy recoveries. In 2006, he broke his hand, his collarbone and his back in separate incidents.

“I was down in the dumps for a couple days about this injury, but now I’m focusing on what I have to do to come back,” he said.

The first Tour of Colorado will be a series of seven of Colorado’s most famous and important bicycle road races beginning Saturday, May 10th and concluding over the Labor Day Weekend. With races throughout Colorado, the Tour of Colorado brings a series of races together for not only the competitors but the spectators and host communities.

The 2008 Tour of Colorado will feature several Colorado State Championship events as well as The State Games of The West! Overall results will be kept for five of the most competitive categories and classes.

The first race in the Tour of Colorado series will be the Excel Sports Sunshine Hill Climb on Saturday, May 10th in Boulder. With well over 300 entrants in 2007, this very popular race will once again bring great racing to the edge of downtown Boulder.

The Iron Horse Bicycle Classic held in Durango over Memorial Day Weekend is now in its 36th year! Already having a record number of entries, entry space is very limited for the Iron Horse. The Iron Horse features the famous Durango to Silverton Road Race, a downtown criterium and a time trial.

Several Colorado State Championship races begin the weekend of June 21 and 22 at the Fort Collins Cycling Festival. The Rist Canyon Road Race returns and promises to once again, be one of Colorado’s most difficult races.

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Roadie: The Misunderstood World of a Bike Racer Entertains Roadies and Educates the Non-Racer

Veteran race announcer and long-time roadie Jamie Smith sets out to explain the sport he loves and the roadies who live for it in his new book from VeloPress, Roadie: The Misunderstood World of a Bike Racer. With help from the pen of nationally syndicated cartoonist Jef Mallett, Roadie celebrates cycling as it explains the neurotic tendencies of the sport and its lifestyle, from shaved legs and garish jerseys, to garages full of bikes worth more than cars. Perfect for roadies and their confused friends, family, and co-workers, Roadie puts an end to the head scratching and leaves roadies laughing out loud as they revel in their misunderstood world. Roadie is now available in bookstores, bike shops, and online at VeloGear.com.

Roadie begins by explaining the lifestyle of a roadie, or bike racer, through the staples of a roadie’s life: devotion to the sport, the bike, the training ride, nutrition and bonking, and more. Smith moves on to “classroom sessions” about drafting and the breakaway, sprints and temporary alliances, and crashes. Smith explains the rituals of race day, the referee and race rules, and the tenuous relationship between rider and sponsor. Finally, Roadie explores cycling’s race formats and how friends and family can get involved in their Roadie’s favorite pastime.

Roadie is needed more today than ever as more Americans take up cycling as riders, racers, and spectators. The New York Times has called cycling “the new golf” and thousands of people are buying shiny new road bikes each year. For these recreational and fitness riders, Roadie offers a much-needed primer on the lingo, the gear, even the politics of a group ride. Pacelines, drafting, sprinting, climbing, and breakaways are turned into everyday commonsense with colorful anecdotes.

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