My Brief Encounter with Team Radio Shack-Nissan-Trek (video)
 

While I am not generally one to worship pro athletes or other celebrities, I must admit that pro cyclists are a little bit of an exception. They generally work in such anonymity, the pay isn't all that great, they are not monstrous or imposing people.... yet what they do totally amazes me. So when I heard that Horner, King and Busche were going to be at the Harpeth River Ride (50+ gathering last week), I was a little excited. In the throng of hundreds of other cyclists there was no way to really meet them of course, but I took these shots of the stars leading out the ride.
http://i1119.photobucket.com/albums/...2/P1030393.jpg
http://i1119.photobucket.com/albums/.../P1030395a.jpg

Then, off I went to work on my metric century... perhaps I would see them again on the course somewhere- but I wasn't counting on it. About ten miles out I did see the entire group of pros stopped with a Nissan service truck nearby, so I figured they had a mechanical and there was no need to stop and offer my help :lol:.

To make a long story short, a couple miles later they came cruising by and I could not help myself, I jumped on at a respectful distance and rode in their draft at about 26 mph for a minute or two before thinking the better of it. (Still at least 45 miles left in my ride... don't be stupid!) I'm confessing, it was a little bit of a thrill and I enjoyed it immensely.

The very best part of this event is missing from the video because I lost track of whether the camera was on or off. I wish GoPro would put an indicator light on their cameras!
One of the cool parts of cycling may be that we are actually closer to our professional counterparts than most other sports.

I would have expecetd better from you--An experienced rider on a Metric and you statt chasing the fast young bloods.:innocent:

But what an experience. Just staying near them would have been a thrill for me (And a miracle) so hope it earns a few beers from your mates.

How did the metric go by the way?

How cool is this, you put up some great pics and vid Billydonn. Thanks for the report and the insight to our sport. What other sport has stars doing their activity with the regular folks!

Bill

Pro-am golf events. Fantasy baseball camp. Rondo is a local product and in the off season he sometimes plays pick-up hoops at the church gym 3 miles from here. Doubt he gets too much competition there but whatever.

On a 41 thread, people were pulling up there Strava segments for the TdC and comparing them to the pros. Times that were turned in by tuned up amateurs were still glacial compared to what the pros were achieving.

Would post the YouTube link to this? My computer chops your embed in half so I can't see what's going on.

No fault finding intended, will modify posting style if it comes across that way. I enjoy all your posts, and meant no offense.

I figured out how to pull the YouTube link from the embed. Beautiful ride, not too far away from here. Might put it on the list of things to do next year. Then I'll get the chance to dust Ted King :lol:

Thank you Bill... to even out my Karma, I will soon post a video of my ride up "Pulltight Hill", the featured climb of the ride. It's not impressive. :)

I hate those ads that block half of videos and pics. To argue with you just a bit, cost of pro-ams and baseball camps is much higher and access more limited than events like this isn't it? My ride stats for the HRR are there on Strava for all to see. Nothing special for most BF users I guess, but I was real satisfied with it. A metric in a strange land with 3700 ft of climbing is still a challenge for me. And no offense taken... carry on.

Points well taken. Cycling is a cost-effective activity.

Please, I'm not nitpicking for once, I just had to ask,,,,when I pulled up your YouTube video, I looked at the related videos and many of them had to do with alien sightings and abductions. Do you know something the rest of us don't? :lol:

Just where do you think pro cyclists come from? You know they're not like us! :)

Great video! Looking forward to the hill climb.

I dropped Horner like a rock (when he pulled over to stop at the team car). Never saw him again! (he must have passed by while I was at a rest stop). I'm the MAN! :)

Enjoyed the video a whole bunch. The only thing better than the video would have been doing the ride.

very nice pics and video, it was a great ride and i will try and do it again.

Thanks Don. I went to the Pro Tour last year, if you remember and my camera broke.

Hey Billyd-did they yell on your left?:lol: Nice video!

Yeah, nice video. Thanks for sharing. And, what a beautiful road to rid upon! Nice wide shoulder and smooth looking tarmac. You're blessed.

Shouldn't those guys be across the pond right now taking a look at a few hills they are going to ride in a couple of weeks?

Glad to hear that your GoPro captures the same noises that mine does. Some type of internal bike harmonics feedback from the pedaling rhythm.

Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed it. As to the road in the video, that was one of the larger state highways used on the ride, but we did go off onto some much smaller rural roads that had no shoulder at all. Of course there was also hardly any traffic on these and they tended to be quite scenic. Surfaces were good to excellent all the way.

I assume most of these guys are pretty familiar with the roads they will face next month in France, but who knows the scheduling of these pros? This was probably pretty much a recovery day for them. Keep in mind that this was a Nissan corporate event, so I'm sure these guys are obligated to do a few of them throughout the year.

The GoPro sure does pick up and exaggerate a lot of drivetrain sound... no question. I edited the volume of the soundtrack down to about 70%, I think it was, to keep down the racket. The camera definitely should have a LED to show its on-off status. With the wind rushing by you can't hear the little beeps it makes and it is very easy to forget whether you left it on or switched it off. That happened during my chase and I actually turned the camera off during the time I was closest to the pro riders... which was a disappointment. Later in the ride I forgot that the thing was on and gobbled up all of my memory, so I have no video of the last 20 miles of the ride. Oh well...

I'm going to work on another video tonight that will be a sampler of various parts of the ride.

The rude fellows... they did not! :) In fact, as shown in the video, one of them actually passes another rider on the right, which is kind of a no-no in my book. The ride organizers told us explicitly not to do that. My guess is that people riding at a certain speed or above are generally going to be holding their line fairly well and normal rules are suspended, so to speak.

What software do you use for your editing?

I use a couple of 16 gig cards. The SanDisk cards are pretty reasonable from Costco. You also get 100 free prints with each bubble pack. One card seems to correspond very closely to a fully-charged battery. I have two batteries and two cards. Theoretically, I'll swap a card and a battery at the same time. They are good for about an hour to an hour and a half, (haven't really timed it closely). But, in reality, I just run with one card and battery because I'm usually in a groove and don't want to stop in the middle of a ride to swap them out.

That was fantastic. I got a huge vicarious thrill from that.

Nice post; it brought back memories of being humbled. The first time I was in the presence of pro riders was right before an edition of the Philadelphia International Cycling Championship (Then called the Core States). A group was out for a training ride, when they passed I tried to jump on (and was encouraged to do so). All was fine until we hit the hills. Then it was like they dropped a stone weight. What really impressed me the most was that we (by my standards) were flying at 25 or more MPH, and they were just sitting up and chit chatting. It's not just training, there is some truth to the difference in genetics. And these riders are will outside of the norm.

Thanks!

I edit with NCH Software VideoPad Professional. I'm still figuring out how to use it but I think it's a lot like Windows MovieMaker. It has a file convertor to cut down the size of the video files made by the GoPro. I use a 16 gig card too and I tend to take a lot of short videos and stitch them together. I think it saves card space. But in the heat of a ride it's easy to forget whether the camera is running or not.

If you don't have a K-Edge handlebar mount, you should think about one!

I do! Wonderful little device. I take one wrap on an old inner tube on the bar before mounting the bracket, usually upside-down. Mostly to protect the bar from scratches. "Freight" told me about those brackets. They are expensive, but strong! I'll take at look at that software. I usually use Premiere for my editing requirements.

You should have just blown by them and done a one man break to the finish. Let 'em know us old guys can still ride! :)

Thanks for sharing.

Which GoPro model do you have?

Way cool!

It's like watching Kevin Durant in basketball. When Kobe Bryant was asked how you defend against some of his shots, Kobe said "you can't (do it well)".