Road Bike Racing - Pictures from Alpharetta - TdG

My wife and I loaded up the chairs and cooler on my Harley and went to Alpharetta for the 6 lap finish on the TdG today. We sat about 3-to-5 10ths of a mile from the finish and had nice front row seats. Here are a few pics... I did more watching than pic taking today, and it was another great one. Actually getting to see the Peleton run down a break away is awesome!

Pics are of the 4 man break away and then the Peleton that is trying to reel them in.

Some more pics

Here is the Peleton again catching the break away.
And where no one wants to be... The back of the Peleton :D
A shot of 2 riders blazing down the hill.

some more neat pics Ti-Carbo! Glad you could go down for the last stage. Were you able to see the podium as well? I can't find out who won the best young rider award.

Here's one of the last lap cranking it up the hill
and one of the last lap blazing down the hill.

And finally - The Jelly Belly Team car!

some more neat pics Ti-Carbo! Glad you could go down for the last stage. Were you able to see the podium as well? I can't find out who won the best young rider award.

Hey timhines - No I don't - We had to be home by 7pm, so right after they went by on lap 6, we had to leave. Alpharetta is 50 miles from my house, so we packed up and got out quick.

Just found one of Lance getting out of the saddle for the hill. This was probably lap 4 or 5 going up the hill.

Thanks for the pics Ti-Carbo (and timhines in the earlier thread). Sounds like a ton of fun being so close to those guys.

Velonews.com has Trent Lowe winning the best young rider award.

If you live anywhere near the race and didn't go check it out, you really missed out. Definately an experience I won't soon forget. Packed up and headed down Friday morning. Got on Woody Gap for Friday's stage and saw the peloton go by twice. Saturday we got a great spot on Hogpen Gap. This morning I headed over to Blairsville for the start and then headed home.

Saturday, woke up early and rode 60 miles from Dahlonega up in the mountains and did the loop which features Neels Gap, Wolfpen Gap, and Woody Gap. What an amazing ride. We have hills here in Tennessee, but nothing like that. I had never ridden in the mountains before so as you can imagine the climbs were amazing, and the descent's were better than any roller coaster on the planet.

All in all a great weekend that is definately going to be an annual trip for me. Hope to see you there next year.

I have watched a lot of races on TV but seeing how close they ride to each other and how fast they can ride, really is something to see. The 4 man break away was working like a mini team time trial with each rider pulling his share up front, and the peleton is truly a serious threat to running them down. Watching it today was just fantastic. I saw how difficult it is to break away and stay away if the peleton wants to catch you. My hats off to those riders who can ride hard enough and long enough to beat the "pack" to the finish line!

Sweet! So I have a water bottle from the Best Young Rider of the '05 TdG!

Saturday we got a great spot on Hogpen Gap. This morning I headed over to Blairsville for the start and then headed home.

did the loop which features Neels Gap, Wolfpen Gap, and Woody Gap. What an amazing ride. We have hills here in Tennessee, but nothing like that. I had never ridden in the mountains before so as you can imagine the climbs were amazing, and the descent's were better than any roller coaster on the planet.

All in all a great weekend that is definately going to be an annual trip for me. Hope to see you there next year.

Hey Tennessee - My son and I drove back home via Hogpen on Saturday - man, what a road and a climb! The descent is just unreal! Wolfpen Gap is at the "summit so to speak" of 180 - that's a very nice ride with lots of semi-banked turns, blind corners, a couple of U turns that can be dicey, nice climbs and decents, and long drop offs with no guard rails if you go off the road - ouch-. On 348 we had a rider "drafting" us at 52mph on a wicked descent (on my auto's speedometer) - we gave him the thumbs up thru the back window and he just smiled! I was gigglin' like a school girl - that was cool! He was fearless and riding like a madman! My son said he must have a special seat so his big brass ones don't get in the way!

Nic pics, TiCarbo. You must have been just down the road from me. When Tafi and the other three in the four man break came through the first time they had just 60 seconds on the peloton. With six laps to go it was pretty much doomed. I so much wanted Tafi to win the stage. For sure, with the layout of the stage today the deck was stacked against him. My daughter kept time and we watched the breakaway absorbed into the peloton on lap 4.

Tafi's at the rear in yellow.

I was only there for the start:

I don't have all of them onto this computer from my laptop yet :( nor the ones processed from my SLR:

http://img161.echo.cx/img161/9062/img26847dt.th.jpg (http://img161.echo.cx/my.php?image=img26847dt.jpg)
http://img161.echo.cx/img161/3205/img26928bk.th.jpg (http://img161.echo.cx/my.php?image=img26928bk.jpg)
http://img161.echo.cx/img161/7161/img27228lu.th.jpg (http://img161.echo.cx/my.php?image=img27228lu.jpg)
http://img161.echo.cx/img161/7670/img28045jl.th.jpg (http://img161.echo.cx/my.php?image=img28045jl.jpg)

Our friends from OLN....

Great pics, Kidd. I want a digital SLR for my birthday!

Which team rode the matte black Cervelo Soloist?

I saw Floyd up front in the peloton for many of the trips around the circuit.

He almost got taken down by a Discovery rider as they came down toward the finish. The Discovery rider was at about third place and looked back and almost swerved into Floyd.

It was about 300 miles round trip for us and I had to miss out on riding today, but I'm glad we went.

Just thought I'd add my pictures in here too. See http://photobucket.com/albums/y179/martin_j001/

Some from the start of stage 5 in Gainesville, and some from the finish in Alpharetta.

How crowded was the finish. We were tired from the last couple days so we went to Blairsville then the sprint in Cumming then home. I figured the crowds would be much worse than last year and the kids were tired of waiting in big crowds. It looks like we missed some good racing though in Alpharetta.

It was pretty crowded, but really not that bad where we were at. My fiance and I found a space on a wall above (about 8 feet up, and about 10 feet from the road) the rest of the crowd in the corner we were at--where it went from 4 lanes wide down to 1 in the corner, and then I knew the riders would be right in front of and behind us in the parking lot when they finished the race. The finish line area was probably pretty crazy, but we didn't even go over there at all....