La Vuelta a España, trip to Alicante "Day 1"

So here is a few pics.. Day 1:

Our rides started like this every morning… Riding by the marina taking in some sun… ( I was accused of sun doping)

But someone else got accused of sock doping… Prove??

Villajoyosa has some good bumps all around it..

And the weather was amazing..! OK hot but amazing.. Look at thebongolian smile..!!! The kids is having fun..!

Yeehoo was keeping me company for a while till I send him looking for the others as I was soaking in my sweat surroundings..

I do not understand this pic… I am sure he was ahead of me.. He went around twice??

And there was socializing over German lunch in Spain… And plenty of water and other fluids… T-Bong the only brave one to have a beer..

My only KOM of the day came at the "who finish lunch first"

Best image of the TT??? Yeehoo taking a nap in the shade..!!!

Ice cream, smoothies and plenty of other fluids were extremely necessary…

We found Oleg..!!!!

Awesome view by the beach…

And that was it from me on day 1 in pictures in Spain.. And the strava link for the first day.. There was Team beer and Team sangria at night.. Remember those names for day 2… No pics of this.. I left the camera at home..

Hope you enjoyed this adventure and stay tuned for day 2 and 3 that are to come shortly...

Pablo

The Weekend Report guy

Are you ready for the Giro?

For the last couple of years a groups of internet friends and I been running a game that we call Predictors Game... Here we test our knowledge and luck against each other in a friendly way trying to predict the outcome of different races during the year..

So this time we are going, actually we started already running the game with our eyes on the first grand tour of the year... +Giro d'Italia !!! The first stage is this May 6th..!! That is...

Image via Giro di Italia +Twitter account. (thank you!!)

So you want to know what is this about? OK.. Here it goes..!!!

Alora, it's time for the Giro, arguably the craziest and most UN-predictable of the Grand Tours. Loaded with sprint stages, TT's and transitional stages as well as the usual super high snow filled MTFs it will sure to be a fun filled, exciting race. Are you suffering worse than Scarponi-face in VDS? Need a Ferrari-style boost to your ratings? Is your team descending faster than a Shark from Messina? Do you have what it takes to take PINK! Then you need to play the Predictor Game...yet another way to beat ourselves up over our love of cycling!

If you have not played before read below and feel free to play along. It’s really fun and gets you even more into the race! We have a spreadsheet with graphs, etc that you can view at any time and we will post a link to it in the fanpost for each stage. It is a great tool to see the popularity of riders and results. It is also good to double check your picks as we have been known to make keying errors. For actual race info we find cyclingquotes.com previews pretty good!

Rules

In this game, only the stage results matter. You're not committed to keeping the same riders throughout the race, you make fresh picks before every stage. Our overall competition is a combined total of all 21 individual stage scores. You're eligible for the overall even if you miss some stages.

Pick 4 riders for the upcoming stage. The order of your picks doesn't matter. All of your riders can score.

Riders score points down to 10th place. Less popular riders score more points than heavily-picked favorites. See below for scoring details.

The strict entry deadline is the official start time of the stage, the neutralized rollout or Départ Fictif. Be warned - if your post is timestamped one minute late your entry won't count! So do remember that there's no disadvantage to getting an entry in early, even the day before, because you may always change your picks up until the deadline. Feel free to rethink your picks when it emerges which riders are more or less popular with other players. If you make changes, post your revised 4 picks in a reply to your original post.

Try to enter just the last name of the person...Cancellara not Cance for example. And Izagirre I or Costa R. It helps us with the data entry into the spreadsheet.

Scoring

Forgot to mention..!!!

The last 3 stages will be secret entry between the top contenders… To avoid defensive picking..

When we say top contenders we leave the number open because who knows how many will be within striking distance...wooley7 scored the win in the Classics with a long range suicide attack in Liege so you can never count yourself out...NEVER!

We will notify you by email if we need you to do a secret entry.

Results:

We will try and post results in a timely fashion as soon after each stage as possible. However we are all busy so will just do our best there. We will post them along with a post for the next stage.

And if you want to check your entries and results:

Our spreadsheet master msbee created: THIS

Good luck, invite your friends and ATTACK! ATTACK! ATTACK!

Post your entry for the first stage below!

Special thanks to all the hands around the world that make this game possible.

So what do you think? Are you ready for it? Do you have what it takes? If you think so and want to become part of one of the best cycling communities online please stop by at Podium Café and join us..!!!

We are taking picks for Stage 1 already..!

Hope to see you over there..! or over here..!

Thanks for reading and stay in touch for daily updates on the Giro PG competition..!

P.S: if you know someone that might be interested in this sort of game feel free to share 

Pablo

The Weekend Report Guy

How did it happen?

I would say it was somewhere during the early months of the year of 2011 when a first boss and now friend who we are going to call Holm's here started annoying me (again) about making a fantasy cycling team for an online competition called VDS.
He insisted so much that I finally agreed to make a team, part curiosity and part to have him stop asking me about it.. So I began selecting my 25 riders team... I had just an idea of who to pick because of him yelling names at the computer screen for over the years.. I had no actual knowledge about the cycling sport, pro peloton or any of the other races besides the +Le Tour De France.
So how did I start selecting my team? I follow a few simple rules

- I am from Argentina so I picked every Argentine cyclist available.
- My wife is from Germany, followed the same rule... Or almost.
- Complete the rest of the roster with South Americans, Colombians, Brazilians and Venezuelans.
- Oh one of my best friends is from Slovakia so I ended up having a few of those as well.

That's it..! Team was formed and submitted, now Holmovka will leave me alone... No he didn't..! As the season started he kept talking to me about this race and that race... And I was curious to see how my team was doing after all is a competition and I was part of it..

First was the Spring Classics... (most of them from Belgium) Then the Ardennes (don't kill me with the spelling) The what became one of my favourite races of the year +Giro d'Italia just to name a few... There hundreds of races that you can follow now a days...

So I was hooked into "following" professional cycling..

As mid age smoker, over weight internet addict father of 3 I was happy with my life for the most part.. The kids started to grow older and start to annoy me with the typical question of why do you smoke? My answer? Because I am an idiot... My daughter then asked me why an idiot..?? because only an idiot does something that knows is bad for him, can kill him and still keeps doing it..
I probably repeated this thousands of times that I convinced myself of quitting smoking.. if I didn't have the strength to do it for me I would do it for my kids.. (used to smoke almost 2 packs a day)

So in April of 2011 I quit smoking...!!! Hardest thing I ever done..! Now remember I was already over weight right? Let me put it in perspective to you... 1.78 cm/5'10'' 110 kilos at the time of quitting more or less.. Most likely more...110 kilos= 242 lbs.

By May of the same year I had gained somewhere around 20 kilos=45 lbs!! Nothing was safe at home.. or at work.. or at the Chinese buffet.. Or any place I decided to go to.. Cookies, donuts, chips, grapes,peanuts, ANYTHING that I could reach and eat was fair game for me..

So if you can put numbers together.. I was between 140 and 150 kilos at that time... That is a lot of Lbs..! (280? 300?) I don't even wanted to know..! Right about then is when it crossed my mind that i quit smoking to be around longer for the family and I was stuffing my body with all sort of food, not always the healthiest choice in foods either..

This is a pic from October 2011, already melted a few kilos then...

That day I decided that it was enough and I had to start doing something again to lose weight and control my eating habits.. But what could I do?? It was the talk of the week or so at home, at work and with friends..

Finally again Holm's said to me: "Pablo just start riding your bike more often and increase the distance a little every week" Hey..!!! I already know a little about cycling and  own a bike..!! I was commuting a whole mile every day between work and home..(both ways included in that mile) Sounded easy enough so I started..!!

My store brand MTB was OK to go to work and back.. And maybe go around the block a few times... But to actually ride for an hour? Well that was a bit too much for it.. I still did it in more then one occasion but wasn't the most comfortable ride ever...

Then I finally bought a used road bike and that was the beginning of a new story and chapter of my life...

Since then I recorded almost every km/mile I had done in +Strava and you can see my full profile Here.

And this is how I started my way into cycling and everything that comes with it.. Hope you had fun reading this little story about this one more story teller of the web..

Till next adventure.

Pablo Alves.