Bicycle Contests & Giveaways
It’s that time of the week for my weekly update but things around here have been kind of slow. My wife continues to mend from her surgery (a six to nine month full recovery time frame) and I got in a couple of rides. The weather played some weird games this week which caused me only to get two rides in. I was all set for a long ride on Saturday but mother nature wouldn’t cooperate. I got up at 7:00 AM, looked outside, and it was iffy at best. I pulled up the weather map on my computer to have a look and I wondered if I could slip a ride in anyway. As I’m sitting there I look out the window at the tree tops and they’re moving some. Looks like it would be a windy ride. After about five minutes I look out again and it’s raining. It looks like a light rain and I decide to try and wait it out. After about 30 minutes it’s still raining but the wind is really gusting. It turned around to rain on and off all day and then it rained all night last night. Needless to say, no riding was accomplished.
That brings me to today’s subject on bicycle contests and giveaways. I came across three this week with two on one site. Here’s a quick rundown of what they are.
At The Bicycle Tutor
Alex over at The Bicycle Tutor has got one contest and one giveaway going on. The contest is a Logo Design Contest where the winner can take home $100 cash. The deadline for entries is September 26, 2008 and contest details can be found here.
The second item Alex has going on is a giveaway each month thanks to the fine folks over at Genuine Innovations. They sent Alex six SecondWind Road Carbon Minis
On a side-note, if you’re not visiting The Bicycle Tutor or reading his feed then you are missing out on some great stuff. I’ve used several of his video tutorials to do maintenance on my bike.
At Ride-Strong
This giveaway has been going on for a while but I just got a reminder for it today. If you don’t know about it, Ride-Strong is giving away a new 2008 Colnago Carbon CLX road bike that retails for $5,500. How cool is that? Entering your name for this giveaway is easy. Just visit this link, Ride-Strong.com Colnago Carbon Bike Contest, and follow the directions to subscribe to the Ride-Strong RSS feed and newsletter. A winner will be randomly chosen when Ride-Strong reaches 1,500 RSS subscribers. At the link above you can also find information on how to increase your chances of winning.
I’ve entered both the Colnago Bicycle and CO2 inflator giveaways. I just don’t think I have the talent to enter in the logo design contest. Anyway, I could sure use that Colnago bike just as I’m sure many of you could too. I will tell you that I would subscribe to both The Bicycle Tutor and Ride-Strong even if they were running some contests. They’re both have great content on their sites. Good luck to anyone who enters.
Remember, Bike To Live.
Bike Ride 34 – Drag Racing a Cement Truck
The weather the last couple of day has been spotty due to some strong thunderstorms that rolled through the area. It was a little windy yesterday afternoon too. The kicker, though, has that the temp has plummeted. Lows the last couple of nights have been in the low 70s with highs in the mid 80s. Awesome riding weather. This morning was no different. I rolled out of the garage at about 5:10 and was greeted with crystal clear skies, a bright half-moon overhead, and a slight chill in the area. Awesome.
Riding down the street I noticed a clicking sound coming from my rear wheel area. I stopped a couple of times to try and find what it was but couldn’t. It seemed to go away as I rode. I hope it isn’t anything serious.
Remember the roadside radar gun I told you about back on Ride 33? As I approached it this morning I wanted to to try and post a better speed than last time (16 mph). I shifted up a gear and began pushing a little harder. I went by it at 22 mph which is respectable for me. I’m pretty sure I can do better but I was technically still in my warm up phase and didn’t want to push it too much.
I road about another half-mile when a cement truck passed me. If you recall, I’ve been seeing these trucks every morning as they head out to the new high school that’s under construction. This truck was cruising pretty good but got caught at a stoplight just ahead of me. As I rolled up next to him I couldn’t resist the temptation to have a little drag race. Assuming he had a full load of concrete I had about a 66000 pound weight advantage and should be able to smoke this guy right? Yes and no. The light turned green and I rolled away from the stop line quickly. I immediately began forming a gap as he was fighting to get out of first gear. I still had a good 10 yard gap when I heard him shift. I pushed it a little harder because I knew he would start catching me as he worked his way through the low gears. I was at about 20 mph when I started to ease up (my legs were heavy and I was still warming up). He eventually got his momentum going and passed me pretty quickly after that. The result was as expected. It takes the cement truck a while to get going so I have the advantage off the line. Once he gets through the low gears and builds up the momentum I’m toast. Oh well.
That’s about the extent of the excitement for today’s ride. I saw a couple of runners (must have been some lazy folks sleeping in this morning) and got my 13 miles done in about 52 minutes. The weather made it a great ride.
BTL
Read MoreBike Ride 33 – Dreams of ‘The Rookie’
After a busy week last week due to my wife’s surgery, it was about time I got back on the bike and re-started my fitness program. I should have re-started yesterday morning but with only about an hour of sleep Sunday night I was in no condition to ride a bicycle. That would have been suicide.
Because I basically had to trash my cycling plans last week I’m performing week three of my fitness program this week. That means I’ll be riding 3 workdays at 13 miles each and a 30 mile ride on Saturday. I Shouldn’t have any problems with that at all. Especially after having a week off the bike.
As usual for my weekday bike rides, the alarm was going off at 5 AM, and I was rolling out of the garage by about 5:10. The weather outside was near perfect. There was a little humidity in the air but there were no clouds, no wind, and the Harvest Moon was shedding quite a bit of natural light. I hoped the pristine conditions were foreshadowing a pristine ride.
Leaving my neighborhood it was quiet out. There was much less traffic than there was back on Ride 32 but I did see a couple more cement trucks heading out to the new high school. Overall though the roads were virtually empty for me and it was nice. I always feel a little anxious when cars approach me from behind and today there was very little of that.
After a couple of miles I really began to fall into a rhythm and I noticed my speed was a little higher than normal. I was pushing the 52T like I said I would but I think the week off may have had something to do with it. Since my last ride, I had also moved my saddle forward a little bit to try and take some weight off my hands. It seemed to help my hands but I wonder if it also helped with my pedal stroke. I guess I’ll see how tomorrow’s ride goes. I really need to take my bike down to the local bike shop and have the fit checked.
Nearing the half-way point I started to notice several runners I hadn’t seen before. I do see a few over near my house but I’m usually the only person out-and-about near my turnaround point. All told I saw about six runners today and one other cyclist. I saw the bike rider on my home stretch and I’m not sure if he saw me wave. If you’re reading my blog, “Hey!”
Today’s ride was great. I felt refreshed the entire time and had no after-effects from taking a week off. I road my 13 miles in 51 minutes today.
So, why were there dreams of the movie ‘The Rookie’? If you don’t remember the movie, it’s the one where Dennis Quaid plays a high school baseball coach who makes a bet with his team. The bet was that if the team wins the district championship he would try out for a major league team. Well, the team wins and he has to try out. Before he does, though, he’s driving down the road at night and comes upon one of those portable speed display systems that let you know how fast you’re driving. Police usually put these in places as a deterrent to get people to slow down. Anyway, he decided to throw his fastball by it to see how fast it is and if he’s fixing to make a fool out of himself at the tryout. He throws a ball and it registers 68 mph on the digital readout. He’s obviously disappointed and goes to pick up the ball. What he doesn’t see is the display tick up to 98 mph after he walks by.
Well, they had one of these gadgets placed on the long straightaway leading away from my neighborhood. I see it and wonder if it’ll pick me up on the bike. I hunker down (that means getting about as aerodynamic as a brick) and press on. I get within a couple hundred feet and it registers 16 mph. As I get close it flickers to 17..15..16..15..17..16. I go by the radar wondering if it was having a hard time tracking me and it was actually trying to read out 26 mph. I look down at my computer and it says 16.2 mph. I guess I’m not as fortunate as The Rookie and won’t go home and find a message from Garmin-Chipotle on my voice mail. Oh well. You gotta have dreams right?
Bike Ride 32 – Where did all this traffic come from?
The word for this mornings ride is “traffic.” I could not believe how much traffic there was. During my normal ride time from 5:15 to 6:15 AM there is usually very little traffic at the start with it gradually building towards the end. This morning it was shear chaos from the start. I began to wonder if I had missed something in the news of if I had accidentally overslept and didn’t realize it. There were cars making turns into and out of places there were way out of the ordinary. A new high school is being built a few miles down the road and they must have had a big concrete pour going on because I must have seen at least 8 concrete trucks. Needless to say, my head was on a swivel this morning. It just didn’t feel right.
I started off as usual by rolling out of the garage at about 5:15. The sky was partly cloudy and dark. I believe I actually felt a couple of sprinkles. On my way down the driveway I had to stop and admire my lawn. I mowed it yesterday after I got home from work and I always love the look of a freshly mowed yard. After patting myself on the back I rolled out the driveway.
Just like Saturday’s ride, I started in the big chain ring and stayed there the entire ride. I feel like I’m already accustomed to riding in it so there’s no going back now. Maybe it’s a manly thing. Anyway, I was still working on my 500 mile base fitness so I wanted to take it somewhat easy today and not push it too hard. I felt really good though after warming up. I was able to maintain a good 13-14 mph average speed with no problems at all. A couple of times I found myself riding a little faster than that and had to reign myself back in. With the humidity that was already building I worked up a good sweat though which felt great.
I saw a few runners this morning (mainly on my return trip) and one other bicyclist. The bike rider I saw about 5 minutes into my ride and he looked like he might be a commuter. He was going the opposite direction of me and I barely saw him. He was on a hybrid wearing dark shorts, a dark shirt, no helmet, and no lights. Talk about suicidal.
Anyway, that’s about it. Today’s ride was 13 miles in 56 minutes. With me heading out of town tomorrow morning I’m not sure I’m going to be able to ride tomorrow or not. I plan on taking my bike with me on my trip to Gainesville so I can still get my rides in. We’ll just have to see how things go with my wife and her surgery.
Added a subscribe to comments plugin
When I post a comment to a blog I like to know if there were any comments following mine. Especially if I asked a question. Besides going back to check the blog post once in a while (assuming I remember I made a comment somewhere), the easiest way to know if there were comments is to be able to subscribe to the post and receive email notifications that a comment has been added. So, I took the time to add that feature to Biking To Live tonight. I’d appreciate it if somebody could leave a comment on this post, subscribe to comments, and let me know if you receive an email notification of follow-on comments when they are added.
Thanks and hope you guys and gals like the new addition.
Read MoreCONNECT WITH BTL
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