Friday full of bike racing.

I swore off the Tour de France this year. I've just got too much on my plate to be devoting three hours a day to the Tour. I've been good. No VS. Only visited cyclingnews.com until after the stages. Yesterday I cheated a little and caught the last 30 minutes of Millar's heartbreaking breakaway through a ticker feed. Today went to hell. It was too exciting not to watch. At first I just followed cyclingnews' live feed, but before I knew it I had three different cyclingfans feeds open in multiple languages.

And what a stage! Cancellara had nothing, Cadel Evans attacks (sign of the apocalypse?), Armstrong climbs and Contador. I kind of expected that out of him. He's young, strong, brash and has to remind everyone he's the one to beat. But he sure did it with style, didn't he? At least Ventoux will be on a Saturday.

All that excitement made me want to get out and turn the pedals myself. That and an inexorable desire to hand money to Chris made me drive down to the Kreb Races.

A small field showed up for the A race. Joe Zaverdas was the main guy to watch, and I've learned my lesson. The goal for the race was make sure I finished in the same group as Joe without completely blowing up.

Sure enough, he attacked with 15ish laps to go. Craig and some dude in red jumped on and I followed. Pretty quickly we had a good gap. Joe went like an animal and pretty soon I was feeling pretty lousy. I was impressed that Craig and red guy could pull through. A little bit more and it felt like a fat guy was sitting on my chest. Just in time, Rob pulled the group back up for the catch and everyone relented. From there nothing got away. Attack, chase, attack, chase. Joe took two primes, but nobody would go with him. I sat in mostly, actually pretty blatently, but it took me a long time to recover from the beating I took in that little breakaway.

In the sprint, Rob was nice enough to lead out and I sat a couple wheels back of Joe. Joe took off early and I sat, sat, sat and then wiggled around him by about half a wheel at the line. No my most impressive win, but I'll take what I get. Joe could have attacked 500 meters earlier and dropped me easily, so I appreciate him waiting.

Craig, George and Chris all showed up to race, even though they're going to race Union Vale on Sunday. Thats a true sign of toughness, punishing yourself for 90 minutes in a club race two days before a big hilly race. Good luck guys!