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The pro-cycling race in Philly every June has both a men's and a women's race. The race is a around a 15 mile loop and the men do like 7 laps and the women do 4 I think. Each lap includes a climb up the Manayunk Wall. It's neat to watch both of them - they are on the course at the same time for a period. At one point the moto crew for the women's race came around the corner and they had put on their sign that for the first time ever - the women had lapped the men. The crowd went wild. :) (don't ask me to explain the logistics of it, as I honestly can't remember and it was 2 years ago that I was up there riding around on my bike with my sister and brother-in-law, watching it from several vantage points).
The one thing I noticed that I thought was interesting was how the team cars rode. The cars for the male riders rode with a level of crazy reckless abandon that the women's cars did not. Despite that in all cases it was men driving the cars. It was actually an interesting difference.
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Totally impressed by the six ladies riding the tour (REVE). Pretty awesome and fun to follow.
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Exergy
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We just got back from a vacation that was partly in France, and arrived at our hotel on the outskirts of Rouen to find two, count em, two professional teams camped out there. Each team had a full size bus for the riders, an equally large truck to serve as a mobile workshop, several cars to carry the team bikes, at least two bikes for every rider, extra wheels for all those bikes, extra chainrings and parts in the truck, tools and washing equipment... After my husband picked his jaw up off the ground, he tried to estimate what all that must cost - in addition to salaries and team clothing, and just gave up. It's a hugely expensive proposition, to outfit a professional cycling team. This is way out of the league of things like marathon running.
I'll post pictures as soon as I can figure out how. I've tried the paperclip symbol, but it just seems to park the images somewhere.
