The Tour de France!

The Tour de France started today! As I write this the prologue is going on (although none of the big names have gone yet, so we don't know who will lead tomorrow). Google is offering team HTC-Columbia's stats realtime in the tour via an API, so I may play around with that a bit (or at least collect the data... I've never looked at pro riders' stats before).

They also have a good explanation of power, and why it's an interesting metric. I really have no concept of what my power:weight ratio is (I've never ridden a bike with a trustable power meter), but it would be interesting to see what my power:weight was versus a pro. Some day when I'm rich I'll get a power meter :-)

Anyway, it's going to be an interesting tour. Will Vino ride for Contador? Will Basso win? Can Lance's monster of a team get a W? Who knows, but it'll be fun to watch over the next few weeks :)

Cycling in Madison

Now that I have this fancy blog, I might as well use it :-).

For my birthday I was given a fancy bike computer (Garmin Edge 705, if you're interested). I take it on all of my rides, and record them. I publish the results on runsaturday.com, which is a pretty cool page for managing things like this. If you're interested in fitness at all, this site has a plethora of tools which will automatically analyze your fitness for you. It's very interesting!