Tour of Georgia Final GC:
1 Floyd Landis (USA) Phonak Hearing Systems
2 Thomas Danielson (USA) Discovery Channel
3 Yaroslav Popovych (Ukr) Discovery Channel
4 José Enrique Gutierrez Cataluna (Spa) Phonak Hearing Systems
5 Janez Brajkovic (Slo) Discovery Channel
6 David Zabriskie (USA) Team CSC
7 Nathan O'Neill (Aus) Health Net p/b Maxxis
8 Marco Pinotti (Ita) Prodir-Saunier Duval
9 Christopher Baldwin (USA) Toyota-United Pro
10 Cesar Augusto Grajales (Col) Navigators Insurance

Great job Chris Baldwin and Cesar Grajales! These guys deserve top 10 placings in the largest stage race in the US. Both are the nicest guys in the world and road great races. I know Chris was a bit down after his Tour of CA, and Cesar didn't even get selected by his team to race in the Tour of CA so these results certainy help heal those wounds.

As you can see below I predicted exactly the result Cesar would get a few days ago and he came through with flying colors with a 4th place on Brasstown Bald yesterday. Sweet ride Cesar!

I have a close conection to Cesar as he was my teammate at Jittery Joe's in 2002 and he also spent time at my parets house this past winter in Scottsdale training and geeting a bike fit and orthodics at Foot Fitting.

Of course I've also spent a lot of time with Chris and Kimberly Baldwin and am just so happy Chris pulled ut a top result. Chris did a lot of work on the fixed gear bike this winter and tried to increase his ability to atatck and increase the pace above Lactate Threshold. Looks like it is all paying off!


GABA Chandler Group ride:
Today and yesterday I spent time on the Desert Breeze rides in Chandler, AZ with the local chapter of the GABA. This is a fun group of riders that really know how to organize some quality training irdes. This weekend we worked on pace lines and skills work. Working on a smooth rotation and making the group work as a cohesive team was a lot of fun. I hope everyone learned a few tips and gained confidence in riding in a past moving paceline.

This photo was taken today at the beginning of the ride before I was wasted like a salty dog in the 95+degree heat...Uth this was my first time in any kind of heat this season.

Thanks for the rides guys! Can't wait to do it again.
Dirk

Floyd takes another TT victory today. Man that guy is undefeated this year. Danielson has his work cut out for him as he tries to capture his second straight Tour of GA. Tom did have an incredible ride today finsihing only 4 seconds behind Floyd and 20 seconds ahead of Zabriskie.

Any one out there see that Cesar Grajales of Navigators was 6th yesterday and 19th today? Last year he was 80th in the TT so this shows some great improvement over the winter. Of the US based riders Nathan O'Neill was first followed by Baldwin, England, Kobzarenko, Louder and then Cesar. I also have to mention the fact that Andrew Bajadali had a good ride too today finishing 29th.

Look out for Cesar on Brasstown Bald Saturday. He won this stage in 2004 ahead of Lance and Floyd, and can certainly repeat. A top 10 overall GC for Cesar is not far off.

GABA Group rides and Clinic...
I'm in Phonix this weekend working with the GABA club Saturday and Sunday. I will be on the Desert Breeze and Chandler rides this weekend leaving at 7am sharp. Saturay I will also be conducting a cycling skills clinic after the ride. Maybe see some of you there:)
Dirk

Tour of GA is finally here. Can Danielson take top honors again? I hope so. That kid is the real deal and I hope this is a step towards a podium spot in a grande tour some year.

I also want to wish Henk Vogels good luck. He was 10th in stage 1 and helped Freddie R. Get 2nd. Henk is the ultimate teammate and if you aren't careful he'll win the race all by himself. Did anyone out there see Henk in the Tour of Flander's coverage on OLN a few weeks ago? He could barely make it up the Koppenberg climb because his ankle hurt so much. Henk crashed a few seasons ago while riding for the Navigators and the crash almost ended his career. If it was anyone else in that situation it probably would have, but Henk is the hardest toughest guy I know in cycling. That guy can suffer like no one else.

Mobile race coverage:
Check out this post from CyclingNews.com-
WAP service for Tour de Georgia and other Live Coverage
With the Tour de Georia starting today in Augusta, Georgia, cycling fans don't have to miss a moment of the action thanks to free WAP service from Cyclingnews.
For the Tour de Georgia, simply type http:/live9.cyclingnews.com/wap/ into the browser on your WAP-enabled handheld device or mobile phone, and you can follow the minute by minute, attack by attack action at the 2006 Tour de Georgia from our live commentary team of Kristy Scrymgeour and Mark Zalewski.

Man what a tough day. Today was the Boulder-Larimer RR. 88 mile, 8-laps of an 11 mile lap with one dirt section of a mile.
Final result-
Tarkington 1st
Chuck Coyle 3rd
Jon Baker 5th?
Dirk- 8th
110 miles, 4:46, 217 avg watts, 260 normalized power, 3700jk's

First I rode out with the RIO team to the race venue, 20 miles north of Boulder. Then the wind picked up right at the start and so we put our team on the front to rotate through the five mile stretch heading north which had a nasty cross wind comin goff of the foothills.
On the second lap we finally dwindled it down to eight guys- 4 Vitamin Cottage (Coyle, Tarkington, Baker and myself). Those are good numbers especially when none of the other four were teammates. But our luck didn't last as I flatted in the dirt section and had to ride 2 miles to the feed zone to find a wheel (no suppport vehicles today). After finding a wheel in the feed zone from Jake Rosenbarger I was back in the race in the third group minutes behind the second group.

I figured I should work as hard as possibe the rest of the race to at least get the training in. Luckily I found five other guys that didn't mind rotating and I put evrything into my moves to try and make up ground. Finally on the last lap we saw the second group and put our heads down to try and make contact prior to the dirt section (2 miles fom the finish).

Our effort paid off and we caught the group as we entered the dirt. In that next one miles stretch of dirt the one group became three and I was in the second rotating with 18-year old Peter Stetina (son of Dale Stetina winner of the 78 and 83 Coor's Classics. I rode with Dale Wednesday and had a great time talkig about the 'old days. He was a big reason I started racing in the first place). I was pretty confident I could get us close enough to the group of three just ahead of us where I could then jump acrossed and win the sprint for 8th. As we entered 400 meters to go I saw the front three were slowing dramatically and I gained plenty of confidence. I then attacked with about 200 meters to go and passed the few remaining guys to win the sprint.

Great ride Tark! Thanks for pulling thru for us.

I had a very good ride today and headed up to Jamestown, then up towards Ward. It is 85 degrees out and perfect day, no wind!

I first saw Will Frishkorn heading up to Jamestown when I was coming down. I think he said he was racig in Tour of GA next week so good luck to Will F! I know he has had some rehab after knee surgery so next week will be his first big test.

Then on the way up to Ward I ran into Bajadali, or more he came pas me on a hard interval effort. Fortunatley he was only doing 3-minute efforts so I was able to ride for about 30 minutes with, and mostly behind him. He is headed off to GA this Sunday and this will be his first time competing in the big show down south. Andy rides for Jelly Belly after having been on Vitamin Cottage with me last year. Good luck Andy!

Then on myt way back home over Lee Hill I came up on Connie and Davis Phinney out riding. The last time I saw Connie was while skiing in North Boulder Park during our last snow fall a few weeks ago (see a my first posting back in March..same day I skied with Chuck and Ty in the park). Conie and Davis both look great and staying in shape as the world class athletes they are.

Ironman Arizona- Gota give a big shout out to my friend Michael Lovato who nailed the victory in IMAZ last weekend. Michael and his wife Amanda were over for a BBQ a few nights ago as just had to hear his first hand account of how he won. Not too often you get to sit back with a ber and listen to a pro tell you how he spanked the world's bext triathletes:) Great job Michael!

On to the Boulder Larimer RR tomorrow for me. Hopefully a good report to follow:)

BDR-Roubaix
The file above is a screen shot of my Boulder-Roubaix race this past Sunday. No one critical power duration was very impressive but the constant grind and effort it took to ride on the dirt made it a hard race to complete. My average watts for the race was 240w.

It was amazing you many attacks and surges happened. I didn't expect it to be so difficult so I was pleased with how well I lasted. In 3:09hrs we covered 77 miles mostly on dirt and my normailized power was 309w. Tough race!

My team let a 6-man move go up the road with my Vitamin Cottage teammate Jon Baker in it. This happened with about 3 laps to go (we did 9 total). I then won the next group sprint for 7th place (out of about 15 in my group). My teammate Scott Tietzel almost won the sprint with a sweet attack with 800m to go but Tom Zirbel slowly brought Scott back and I was ale to jump around Tom in the last few meters.

I'm happy Chris Baldwin won (Moninger was 2nd) and hope he has good legs next week at the Tour of Georgia.

Here are results from Sunday's AST criterium in the link below. I was 4th. Moninger won, Jake Rosenbarger (shown in an earlier blog photo of mine) was 2nd, Dan Schmatz 3rd.
http://www.americancycling.org/results/2006/april/ast.htm

OOOPSS! Looks like my label of USAC COO for Steve Johnson in my below photo has just now changed, 24hrs later, to CEO of USAC. Congrats Steve!

Heads of State:
I love this group shot of Uli (SRM Founder), Hunter Allen (Cycling Peaks Software Founder), Steve Johnson (USAC COO), Scott Schnitzpahn (USAT Director of Coaching), Jiri Mainus (USAC Compt Dir. and my national team coach as a Junior), Max Testa (Godfather of US racing, Coach for Motorola, Sports Performance Program at the UC Davis Medical Center, etc), and Gear Fisher (Training Peaks Founder).

All of these guys do a great job and it will be exciting to see what they are cooking up next for all of us to enjoy!

RVV- Tonde Van Vlaanderen- Tour of Flanders
Great job to George for getting 3rd. His hands were tied with a teammate up the road and had to hold back from chasing. I would have loved to see a rematch of the Paris-Roubaix sprint between Boonen and George. Hopefully we will seeHincapie on the top spott this Sunday in Roubaix!

Koppenberg Boulder
Back here in Boulder we had our own classic RR called the Koppenberg. This circuit is certainly not even close to beig as hard as the real eal in Belg. but we did have a lot harder winds to deal with this year. The wind was blowing at about 40+mph and after 4k the first break was already gone. I was lucky enough to make the select group of 8 and only two amateurs were in it (myself and Jason Donald).

The dirt section this year was a lot better than year's past but the wind made sure no ojne had an asy ride. The first 4k were at lightening speed and when we hit the first cross wind section after the climb the rotation was Moninger, Baldwin, Frishkorn, Stockburger, Myself, Donald, Zirbel and Bajadali.

The finish played out perfectly for Moninger as we kept Tom Zirbel at a 20second gap for the last four laps. this gave Moninger a perfect target to bridge up to with 2k to go. The rest of us finished about 15 seconds back and glad the day was done. See this site for full results: http://www.americancycling.org/results/2006/april/koppenberg.htm

This photo was taken in Brugge by Matt Allen.

Talk About Cross Training!
This is great..Here is Matt Allen being flipped off of a bike by two judo experts. Matt is in Belgium racing or the Cycling Center and they were sent to the local Judo Gym to learn how to crash. This looks like a great exercise for all cyclists and triathletes to incorporate into their training.

Matt will get tested in his first Belgian race this Wednesday and hopefully he won't have to put this new skill to use:)