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Or, as the subtitle of his blog has it, "one
day of the Tour de France--how hard can it
be"? Rob Mackey's blog, The
Climb,
chronicles the last six weeks of his
underwhelming preparation for riding a stage
of the Tour
de France. His plan is to
participate in L'Étape
du Tour Mondovélo . L'Etape,
as it's called, is a one day race for 8,000
cyclists that covers one of the mountain
stages of the Tour de France. This
year, L'Etape features a 23 km climb
up the Col du Tourmalet (7.5% gradient)
followed by a second 15 km climb up the
Hautacam (7.2% gradient) over a total
course of 165 km (105 mi).
Unfortunately for Rob, most of his cycling
experience is riding loops around Central
Park in New York on the weekends. The blog
begins six weeks from race day, at which
point he's finally begun working with a coach
on a serious training program in an effort to
salvage his ride. Prior to that, he'd logged
just
280 miles on his own in the previous month
(not bad for a runner, but a little low for a
cyclist).
Along the way he's gotten some excellent
advice. Cyclist Jonathan Vaughters provided
a good
"how to" on climbing. Jonathan is the
sporting director of the American cycling
team, Slipstream/Chipotle,
and himself holds
a record-setting ascent of the
fearsome Mont Ventoux. He was also a Tour de
France teammate of Lance Armstrong on the
United States Postal Service team. Vaughters
sums up his
advice as follows: "If
you are going about your business of climbing
properly, you will be breathing like a water
buffalo, sweating like a chain gang, and
probably have snot dribbling off your chin.
If this is not the case, you aren't doing
this correctly".
One of the best
parts of the story are the
comments
on the blog. They are often
hilarious and range from the incredulity of
bike snobs who feel that no human can
possibly climb a
mountain on a bike without years of training
to the encouragement of sympathetic readers.
Despite his inauspicious beginning, it
sounds like Rob has managed to cram in enough
last minute training that he'll make it to
the end of his ride on Sunday, July 6th at
L'Etape.
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The second Cohasset
Triathlon went off
smoothly on Sunday, June 29th. Olympian Jarrod
Shoemaker led the men's elite field in a
time of 50:43, while Alicia Kaye led the
women's elite field in 56:19. Maureen
Forsyth was the first (non-elite) woman
and sixth overall (beating 4 of the 9 elite racers).
And Team
Lyons made a big impact! When Karen
(Aaronson)
Lyons's husband Joe died in the first Cohasset
Triathlon last year, it was a tragedy.
Rather than settle for a remembrance to Joe
at this year's race, Karen decided that she
would run her first triathlon to finish what
Joe had started--raising money for research
into the disease affecting their son.
What started as a few friends, swelled to
over fifty people as Karen and Team Lyons raised
over $62,000 for diabetes research, which is
one-quarter of the $229,000 raised by the
Cohasset Triathlon. This quarter million
dollars is the largest volunteer-led donation
to the Juvenile Diabetes
Research Foundation
this year!
The race may be finished this year, but over 3
million children (and adults) in the US
still suffer from type 1
diabetes. You can
help find a cure by donating through Team Lyons.
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It's summer. Why are you still inside
reading email? Get outside and enjoy it!
Sincerely,
Mark Connell
nuBound
email:
thebounce@nubound.net
phone:
888.480.NUCLeotide (or 888.480.6825)
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