06 July 2006

Tour rolling.

Sweet pic from today's TdF stage (it's a team game).


Well, the first week of the TdF is nearly in the books. Although it's always a great show, the action has been pretty boring: breakaways that won't make it, and a sprinters dominating the tour to this point, with a fair amount of crashing too. Boonen is in Yellow, but McEwen has 2 stage wins, and the green jersey. We'll see how my predictions pan out...

Whatever, maybe it would be more exciting on TV, but we don't have cable so I'm just watching the 2 minute updates on velonews. They do have a very sweet daily video diary with Chris Horner. Check that out.

Unlike some of the top cyclists in the world who like to put extra blood in their body for performance, I'm taking it out (in case you don't know, here's why). From a training perspective, the first couple weeks went OK. I ran in a very difficult big horn 30k trail run after 3 weekly bleeds. My next bleed after big horn, was very bad, tired all week, virtually no quality training. I amazingly recovered this week after my 4th bleed (although my CBCs don't really show raised HCT or HGB). We did go to Madras for the 10k, where I was 3rd overall running a sub 38 minute 10k. I also did the weekly crit yesterday, and felt OK. And since I got my upgrade to a Cat3, and a spot for our team opened up for the BMC Cascade Classic, I'm deciding to give it a go. It starts next Friday, and was a race I really wanted to do. We have a really strong team, and it will be fun to ride with those guys.

Don't tell my doctor, but I'm skipping next weeks blood removal to prepare. I have been going every 8 days anyway, and am coordinating with the red cross to start doing my bleeds there, so I'm thinking my next one will be the week of the 17th at the red cross, so some in-need person may be able to use my iron rich blood for a transfusion.

Go Floyd! Standings should change on Saturday in France (Big TT).

Have a good weekend.

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