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 to give away. Alex will give away one a month for the next six months. Entering your name into the giveaway is simple. All you do is enter your email address here and click on the verification link that gets sent to the email address you entered. If you already receive email updates from Alex’s tutorial feed then your name is already entered. At the end of each month he’ll choose a winner at random.

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.

I slept in a little this morning and took off at about 7:30 AM for my Saturday ride. It had rained yesterday and last night so the roads were wet but not bad. I had to dodge the occasional puddle but nothing major. I went out today just trying to ride a good distance while maintaining a good speed. I wanted to try and average around 15 mph. I also had a basic idea of where I wanted to ride too.

Throughout the ride I saw a lot of folks out for their Saturday morning exercise. Bikers, runners, walkers, dogs walking their owners and so on. At one point I saw a group of about 5 women who had been running. They were gathered around one of those orange igloo water coolers getting a drink on the side of the road. Several were in the same shirt. As I continued up the road I saw another group of about 6 women; again in the same shirt. It must have been some kind of organized runners club or something like that. I continued to see several other runners.

About two miles after my usual weekday turnaround point I hit a new section of road that is pristine for bike riding. The road has only been in existence for about a year and isn’t well-traveled. It has a bike lane and rides very well. I think I was passed by one car on this section of road.

After turning around and making it about halfway back home I hear, “on your left!” I look over my shoulder and it’s a guy passing me. I’m cruising along at about 17 mph and this guy is moving pretty good. He’s riding a Colnago with aerobars and he’s tucked in. He’s probably ten years older than I am but like I said, he’s bookin’ it. A few minutes later I get passed by another guy, about my age, riding a Trek. The two guys are together it seems and I’m able to stay with them pretty good. In fact, they were rabbits for me to chase. I didn’t want to catch all the way back up to them so they wouldn’t think I was some jerk. To stay with them I really had to push it and it felt great. The both stopped as one of the guys was apparently ready to turn into his neighborhood. I passed them then but the guy on the Colnago passed me again a few minutes later and turned down a side road about a quarter mile later.

This was another super ride. It was nice to see all the folks out getting exercise and even better to see a couple of fellow road riders. It was also great to be able to really push it.

Here are the numbers for today: 25.14 miles, 1 hr 36 min, 20.8 mph max, 15.6 mph average