Folks,

I am going to Italy next week and will be around Lake Como for a couple of days. Of course I want to ride up Madonna de Ghisallo but since this is not a cycling vacation I will not be going with my bike. 

Does anybody know where can I rent a decent bike for riding up there?

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I've got used to ask technical questions to expert folks here and they have helped me a lot on the inclusion of the road racing discipline on my menu of cycling equipment and skills. Before I give details so you can answer the title questions I will give you an update about my latest decisions:

I am riding a Canyon Ultimate CF. Couldn't be happier with the bike, light, confortable, stiff and responsive. Great bike.

After a period using my XTR pedals on the road bike I needed to buy new shoes and decided to go for Look Keo 2 Max with grey cleats. It took me a lot of time to adjust the left foot cleat (maybe next one will be red), but now I am pretty happy and definitely feel that it was a good move. The road pedals give me noticeable more support.

Now...data for your help on the flp:

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I don't know what is going on with the designers of the world. There must be a conspiracy theory that explains all this white blue and black.

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Only this shy spanish-flag-like belt? Seriously? Why Unzue's teams sometimes have such strange national champion jerseys? Specially the spanish one. 

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Vuelta a Chile is back to the calendar after 4 years thanks to a partnership between the government and the local cable company VTR. This year's parcours will be the longest ever with 1200 km and 10 stages crossing 11 out of the 15 regions of Chile and 17 towns. There are 2 time trials, 7 possible sprint finishes and 1 queen stage arriving in Farellones at 2400m of altitude. This will be a 2.2 UCI Event and 23 international teams were invited. 

Vuelta a Chile starts on January 27th and ends on February 6th 2011 and could be a good training race during the northern hemisphere winter.

For more details on the stages and a video preview of the last climb of the queen stage jump to flip.

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This post describes my experiences in my first ever MTB Stage Race.  This is VERY  long, so take some wine, beer,hot tea or chocolate if you are willing to read through everything.

As posted before, the race chosen was the Claro Brasil Ride in Chapada Diamantina – Bahia – Brazil. Two motives drove the decision, first Chapada Diamantina is a natural reserve that I always wanted to know and it is 500km away from my hometown and second my partner and 2 other friends that were going live in Brasil so this was a natural choice for them. The race was 560km long in 6 days, being the first day a prologue of 11 km which we completed in 50 min. For details on the stages and the race course you can go here.

Our objective, being this our first experience, was to complete de race and get the "finisher" shirt . I also entered the race trying to understand better what goes through the minds and bodies of the pros when they do stage races and off course willing and wanting to experience similar sensations. After having gone through that I can tell you that a lot of times I remembered the discussions here at the Café, but let’s not jump into that just yet.

Stage Racing on the jump!

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Folks,

Need to abuse your experience here again. This time it is about the pedals.

As you may know I've been riding my MTB for years but after I moved to Panama I figured out the "road scene" is much stronger here and finally ordered my first road bike. I've read a lot of reviews on the webs but I just can't figure out what pedals to buy. And I trust you guys much more than any other review anyway.

Willing to help? Jump to the flip.

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The raceagedon week (aka, shaity races week) is a good opportunity for a mid season check on performance. So far we have seen how the PRO Teams are doing, how our VDS teams are doing and even how the PdC World Ranking is doing.

The pro riders must be doing the same. While some have already shut down for the year and are focused on their new teams and contracts (I am looking at you Bert) some are trying to recover from an unsuccessful first half of the season and others are planning to be World Champs.

Which bring us to the inevitable question: how are each of us doing? Versus what? What are you talking about Alexandre?

Well, some months ago Mr Van P asked as what were our cycling resolution for the new year. A lot of us posted our commitments here. With the mid winter coming (for us strange Southern Hemisphere people anyway) I was wondering how I was doing Vs what I committed. So I looked back that post to check....

On the jump: How I am doing and the inevitable question: How are you doing on that?

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I didn't and I don't want to start another doping thread. Lately I was even avoiding this type of news and discussions. So why are you writing about it? Well, because this morning I was a little shocked.

I always thought that words like "this damages the sport we love" were words thrown in the wind. Words with no deeper meaning, despite acknowledging that all this scandals do indeed damage the sport. but when I got the newspaper today I was surprised.

Note: We are talking of the sports part of Chilean newspaper El Mercurio, where you usually find on its 5 to 8 pages 90% of chilean soccer news plus 8% of tennis when Gonzalez is doing well.

Half of the back page was talking about the Landis affair with a big picture of Lance and Landis while riding for US Postal. Meanwhile on 2cm X 5cm note: Pozzato wins 12nd stage.

Sadness on the flip 

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This is what Murilo Fischer twittered today: "Incrivel a atitude do Linus G. Que jogou uma garrafa d agua em outro ciclista,so' pq o outro tinha atacado...corrida e' corrida, e o detalhe,a 70km/h na descida,um perigo aquela garrafa rolando no meio do grupo, deveria ser eliminado do Giro!"

Translation on the flip.

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This is not supposed to be a deep statiscal analysis, after all, the PdC have their own specialist on this mix of science and art. Anyway as I looked at the VDS results I was wondering who were the most productive riders so far. Thanks to Ted this is a very easy task. So I just exported to excel and sorted the data. 

A few impressions and the table on the Jump.

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Folks,

Need a little help with the subject above. Let me explain as briefly as I can (on the flip):

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Here I am again for a glimpse of the Argentinean tour. Todays was the last day for the GC riders to try to displace current leader Vicenzo Nibali as the 150 Km stage was a mountain top finish and tomorrow's stage only has one category 3 climb and Liquigas should control the proceedings.

via upload.wikimedia.org

Photo by McSmit via wikemedia commons.

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I am back again with the Tour de San Luis Report. Not a lot to report today as we had the ITT. The course was reasonably short with 19Km. Start was in down town San Luis then straight ahead to the road after a 90 degrees turn, a long straight and back. The course was also reasonably flat gaining less than 100 m on the first half and loosing them all on the way back. 

How it unfolded on the flip.

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Hi folks. I am back again with some impressions of what I could see today in the Tour de San Luis. It was not my intention to cover only the sprint stages, I just couldn't make it on time yesterday to see what happened on Stage 2. It is just how it unfolded. So we continue to play by ear here and try to bring you a little bit of what I saw.

On the flip...

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Can I do a race report based on TV highlights? I think I can't, but I will post the top 3 and my impressions about the sprint. But first, some background: For those unfamiliar with it, the Tour de San Luis is a seven days stage race in Argentina. It is a cat 2.1 race and there was some hype last year because it was Basso's first race after the suspension.

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Wade Wallace has done a nice job again and has taken a ride on the 2010 world championships road racing course. He has it edited on his site. You can check it on www.cyclingtipsblog.com .

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Hi guys. I am in this very fun process of defining which/when to buy a road bike. However I keep asking me this recurrent question: Should I buy a race bike or a plush bike?

Let me give you some background so with luck you can help me with your infinite knowledge and wisdom.

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It has been a while since I want to post this and since we are in the offseason I will give it a try. I know that many of the guys here just want to talk about racing, but you know, we "latinos" always want to get more personal, know a little bit more about who is behind the nicknames.

In this case I am trying to know the rigs behind the nicknames. Some of us here love so much our bikes that I think we will get some nice pics here.

And since my bike doesn't take a picture of me I usually take a picture of her...... 

Meet the girls on the flip

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Ed: From Saturday's chat... good fun!

We don't have a lot of important races going on. OK OK. We have the Vattenfall tomorrow and we had Leadville today. Hum...this is getting contradictory :=).

Anyway, as a new PdCer I enjoyed a lot the"Who we are" and after my second glass of Casa La Joya Gran Reserve 2005 (Carmenere) I thought it was a good idea, since we have people here from everywhere, to post a "Were we ride".

Interested? To the flip! 

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According to Ciclismo a Fondo they have requested a change in the schedule but it would not happen in less than 3 years. For me the spring looks pretty crowded and we would not have any big race after July, but maybe it is good for the non-classics riders and teams. I just can't see where it would fit in the calendar. Would you like it in the spring? When? 

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