Friday, May 09, 2008

Virtual Giro



In spite of my precarious situation I began my virtual Giro yesterday. What this includes is riding each day of the Giro that the riders ride. This means I'll be on my bike each day but two over the next three weeks. Romney and Reed have both joined in and I imagine will put their own spin on it. My rules are as follows:

Each day I must ride a minimum of 10% of the race distance or time.
I do a time trial on TT days.
I climb on climbing days.
I ride each of my bikes at least one day per week (road, CX, fixie, SS, 69er).

If I can finish this and make progress through it will build some base for my objectives during the latter half of the year. 10% doesn't sound like much but given I can barely ride at all I'll be happy with it. Plus, this is my "second" workout of the day. Plus, as soon as I can run I have to start doing some preparation. I wanted to make it harder but after day one I'm going to be happy to just finish this.

Day One - rode a time trial up Emigration from the zoo. 36 minutes. Pathetic, yes, but I'm also super sore today and was too tired last night to ride to bike film festival. Regardless, it felt nice to be out on my bike. I'm very much looking forward to the rest of it.

The Giro course is brutal this year. I wish I had more time to do a better mimick. There are no big climbs until stage 7 so I've got a few days to get my legs going. The last week is absurd. I'm psyched to concoct some big circuits here in the mountains. Since I've never timed myself up Emigration I have no idea how much time I'll shave off but I'm thinking it will be a lot. We'll see. Right now I've just got to stay healthy and get on my bike.

Of course the US doesn't cover the Giro too well anymore. This is a shame since it, for sure, has the best field of this year's grand tours. It's going to be an epic race. Cycling TV on the web has daily live coverage for $30. Rai sport has free daily coverage on the web in Italian. The race seems more appropriate this way anyway. Check out:

http://www.cyclingfans.com/

for daily live streaming coverage and cyclingnews.com and velonews.com for more in depth info.

Now off to ride my bike.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

hey steve
you've inspired alisa to order up some p90x tapes!
as for the Giro- how about stage 15? Could it be the hardest stage in cycling history?
i've been riding almost everyday on my new 585...starting to make a list of the climbs i want to do in france...
Bruce A.

Steve Edwards said...

we're visiting you guys next year for sure. i can recommend almost everything in the charteuse region and l'alpe d'Huez is all it's supposed to be. Didn't get a chance to do the Ventoux, so maybe save that one til we get there. When do you leave?

Anonymous said...

Virtual Cycling - Tacx have a
great product called the Tacx Fortius, it is basically a turbo trainer connected to a PC so you can ride or race in a virtual
environment.

Geoff

Anonymous said...

Have you tried a Tandem ?

Tandem Bicycles