Velonews - Prologue Winner

Last week I posted that I won something. Of course, nothing is for certain until it shows up at your house (or in my case, the office). Well, today I received a package from Velonews. It was a bit bigger than what a cyclocomputer ought to be and since the last I knew people weren't trying to make cyclocomputer bigger, I was curious as to what was in it.

Well, it was a lot more than I expected.

Fine, I pulled out a nice Cateye Tour de France Edition Strada Wireless computer. The body is Tour de France yellow, making it stand out a bit more than the normal grey or black.

I saw other things in the box too. Two waterbottles (one Cateye and one Velonews), a Velonews cap, and some paperwork. Bonus! I can always use waterbottles (although my fiancee might disagree) and I recently discovered caps as a head accessory - so now I'll have a cool cap to wear backwards on my head.

And paperwork. Whatever.

It was only after I had returned back to work for a bit that I looked at the "paperwork".

It was in fact a congratulations card written and signed by Andy Pemberton, Publisher, Velonews.

Now I can't profess I would know Andy if I bumped into him at a bike shop. But with all the various things that he must be busy doing (it's peak Velonews season and it's a real humdinger of a Tour so far), he really didn't need to write something out. I actually expected an invoice with zero charges on it, not a nice handwritten note and a business card.

So for all of us that's tired of the doping, tired of the lying, and tired of all the suspicion surrounding cycling, there are still people involved with the sport who do good things. With very little fanfare they're giving away these cool little Cateye computers, they give some schwag as well, and to top it off, they actually write a note saying congrats.

That's cool.

And here's the stuff all laid out with our cat Tiger sitting guard over it all:

Hey I Won Something!

Let me clarify. It wasn't a bike race.

With that said... Velonews has a contest for the 2007 Tour where you predict the winner of the stage and his average speed. I only entered one so far - the prologue. You can enter after the stage has started but before it gets too close to the end. I don't remember the prologue rules but the road stages are closed at 10k to go.

Last year (or was it the year before) I mentally selected a couple riders before the finish of the stage - and chose them correctly. I never sent in my predictions so felt like maybe this year, if I get that hunch feeling, I'd send in something. This year, with the average speed bit as part of the prediction, I don't think I'll be entering as much. I follow Tour stuff but can't recall a single average speed for a stage - so nothing on which to base my predictions.

Anyway, it seemed that a lot of good racers were clocking mid- to upper- nine minute times in the prologue. I figured that there'd be one guy to break 9:00 and he'd do a doozy of a prologue. So I chose Cancellara and figured out what a 8:45 would be as far as speed went.

54 kph.

Seems reasonable right? I mean pros always TT at 54 or 55 kph.

Anyway, I sent in my prediction. Then I translated 54 kph to mph. And came up with 33.75 mph.

Almost 34 mph on a technical course where no one was breaking any speed records.

Okay, that might have been a tad optimistic. And only one entry per person per day. I would have been better off predicting Pee-Wee Herman winning the prologue.

I missed the coverage of his prologue but saw that some very fast guys were about 40 seconds slower than my predicted winning time. This confirmed my optimistic prediction so I sort of gave up hope that anyone would even break 9:00. And since I was at work and figured I blew the prediction, I sort of ignored the Tour for a while.

Sometime after the prologue wrapped up I checked the results. Lo and behold Cancellara did an 8:50. I quickly calculated the speed - 53.7 kph.

Drat.

I figured someone out there must have guessed something like 53.68 or something.

But surprise, surprise when I got up today to work (yeah, it's Sunday), I saw a spam like email in my mail client with the subject "re: Cancellara, 54 kph"

Because a spammer that uses a cyclist name and a speed deserves at least a chance to infect my machine, I opened the mail. No spammer here (though he probably sends out a lot of emails). Nope. Instead it was a notification that I won the prize for the prologue!

How cool is that??

So I've won two random things so far (both did require some participation). A picture caption contest (the contest and the winners- I got second) and now the Velonews thing.

Anyway, now back to my Sunday's work, house work (finding the PODS key and clearing out some of the basement), and some miscellaneous tasks I have to get done.

Later today I'll be heading over to Naugatuck for a race and we'll see if anything pans out there.

Enter to Win a Polar Heartrate Thingamajig

Enter to Win a Polar here...

All you have to do is give them your name and address. And since it's PEZ Cycling, I figure it's not a bad thing. Just do it before July 13th 2007 as that's when it expires. You have two days.

Oh and you have to know the second American ever to win the Tour de France. Look, PEZ is in Canada. And Canada require winners of things like lotteries and random drawings to pass a skill test. If you don't pass the skill test, no watch. So make sure you know the answer just in case.

Good luck!