November 6, 2009

Hi Joe: My wife and I are traveling to France in April and thought taking in at least one of the Spring Classics would be a good thing to do. Which race is the most spectator friendly and/or the coolest to experience.

Dave Fahrner - Santa Rosa, California

That sounds like a great idea, Dave. I highly recommend it.

Personally, I think that for the real Classics experience you should try and check out at least one of the three races of what I like to call The Classics Week. It all starts with the Ronde van Vlaanderen on April 4th - Easter Sunday. If you can only take in one event and are looking for the crazed Euro-fan, knock-down, drag-out bike race experience, this is the one to take in. The Ronde van Vlaanderen is admittedly not as much on the radar of American fans as Paris-Roubaix is, but most of us consider it to be the harder of the two. Also, without too much difficulty, you can check out at least a couple different sweet cobbled climbs without having to break too many laws. In fact, I have often talked about bringing a small group over for the Ronde and riding bikes from one cool viewing spot to the next.

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November 5, 2009

Hi Joe, winter is on the way and the trainer has made it’s appearance. I enjoy watching races while on the trainer (dvd or recorded off of Vs). Was curious on your opinion of top-ten races of all time….Tours, World Championships, Classics, etc.. I’d like to try and pick up a few on dvd for the trainer rides.

devlaeminck1Kevin Bengtson - Minneapolis, Minnesota

Well Kevin, that's sort of a tricky question, since riding trainers indoors during the Minnesota winter is basically torture, for the most part. Sure, I could list off a whole bunch of beautiful and hard-fought bike races for you to dream about while you're sweating all over your basement floor, but that just might do you a disservice. Unfortunately too, so many of what I would call "the best races of all time" aren't available on DVD anywhere.

It's also really hard to pin down what the absolute best races were, since they all have some cool, redeeming qualities to them. My pick for the most amazing Tour de France ever is definitely Greg LeMond's 1989 8-second victory. Other than that, every race is pretty special.

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October 12, 2009

Do you think that many of the modern tires made with synthetic rubber as opposed to those made with natural rubber have been partially responsible for all the crashing that goes on nowdays?

thpFernado Castro -  Chula Vista, California

Fernando, I am hereby a bit stymied.

I can tell you 100% for certain that synthetic is better than natural when it comes to the "chamois" in your bike shorts. As for tire technology, I lack all that much wisdom.

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