I just got back from a very short, hardly an hour, 20 mile ride and I lost 6 pounds. I wasn’t even going that hard. And, I drank one large water bottle. That is nuts. If this is the case on Saturday, I’m going to have to drink close to a gallon of water an hour just to keep my current weight. I don’t have any idea how many bottles that is, but it sure seems like I’m going to be water logged. The weather is extremely hot. And muggy. This weekend, in Lawrence, is going to be very hard. It is supposed to rain at night and be super hot during the day. Great.

Ben, where are those Ice Vests?

Virtually every roof in my neighborhood is being replaced. These guys have been at it since early this morning. I took this photo leaving to ride at about 4pm. I have no idea how they can function up there.

This should be an interesting Tour. I think as the sport becomes less supercharged, the racing should be way more interesting. The riders themselves will need more rest days during the race itself, thus allowing the long breaks to succeed at a much higher percentage.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that a RadioShack Team rider is going to win the race. Contador is obviously the safe pick, but that is no fun.

How about the local Midwest type riders wins a Elite Nationals last week, with Dave Wenger winning the Criterium Nationals and Jonathan Jacobs winning the Time Trial. It’s great to have the guys that we race thru out the season show case their abilities on such a national level. Congratulations guys.

Here’s a good interview with Danny Pate, who is riding the Tour for HTC. I applaud his thoughts on sticter bans for doping. Danny and I go way back to when he was a up and coming junior. Then later, we used to duke it out for the Iron Otter Award (Best Overall times riding both the MTB and Road stage races) at The Sea Otter Classic. When he came back for Sea Otter one year, when he was riding professional in Europe, I asked him why he is bothering racing MTB’s still. He said, “To be like you Steve.” That guy cracks me up.

The Tour of Lawrence starts tonight with street sprints in downtown Lawrence tonight. Tomorrow is a super hard circuit race and then a criterium on Sunday evening. I’m pretty iffy, but you never know. It’s a bike race and it’s not over until it’s over.

Okay, I need to glue some tires on and do the normal pre-race stuff. It is funny how you wake up with race mentality on a race day, even though I have no illusions of riding more than 200 meters this evening. Once.