The 2012 London Summer Olympic Games

[PotomacCyclist]

In case you’ve been living under a rock, the Summer Olympics start next week. The Opening Ceremony is on July 27. For those interested in bike-related sports, the road cycling events (road race, individual time trials) take place on July 28-29 (men’s and women’s road races) and Aug. 1 (individual time trials). There are also multiple track cycling heats and finals over several days.

BMX races take place on Aug. 8-10. Mountain bike races are held on Aug. 11-12.

Cycling schedule: http://www.nbcolympics.com/cycling/results-schedules/index.html

As for triathlon, the women’s race is scheduled for Aug. 4. The men race on Aug. 7.

http://www.nbcolympics.com/triathlon/results-schedules/index.html

Of course, there are other competitions of interest to triathletes (swimming, track and field/marathon) and the general viewing public. Modern pentathlon involves fencing, swimming, equestrian show jumping, cross-country running and laser pistol shooting.

Here is the entire schedule of events from the NBC Olympics website: http://www.nbcolympics.com/results-schedules/index.html

I believe NBC will be showing every event live in some form, whether on the main NBC network, on the NBC-owned cable networks like the NBC Sports Network or on the NBC Olympics website. The primetime broadcasts will be devoted to coverage of the most popular sports, such as swimming, gymnastics and track and field.

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The Olympics have always been one of my favorite sporting events, even back in grade school. I used to prefer the Winter Olympics because of the high-speed sports (downhill skiing, luge, ski jumping, bobsled, speed skating). But now that I participate in triathlon, running and cycling events (at the non-elite level only), I have more of an interest in the Summer Games.

The Summer Olympics are the main reason that I got into cycling and triathlon as an adult. I did very little endurance exercise from the middle years of college on. After dealing with a shoulder injury, I did some strength training for a few years but nothing too serious. I watched some of the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games but I was busy with other things to start exercising on my own, other than the occasional strength workout or 20-min. treadmill session. After the 2004 Summer Olympics, I decided to start swimming for exercise. Again, nothing too serious. Just regular sessions in the pool over the summer and early fall.

It was the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics that got me started on the road to endurance sports. Michael Phelps’s quest for 8 gold medals was exciting to watch. I actually watched a marathon broadcast for the first time ever without getting bored. As for my (not so fast) swimming, I was surprised to discover that I had developed a decent amount of aerobic endurance. Nothing too special but considering that in 2004, I got completely wiped out by swimming a single lap of the pool, I was glad that I could do an easy 2-hr. swim session (mostly breaststroke, and flawed technique at that).

I decided to start training for something, some type of race. My brother had run a few marathons in the past, so I asked him about training. Since I liked swimming, he suggested that I look into triathlons. Back then, I had only a vague idea of what a triathlon was. I didn’t know the order of the sports. I’m not even sure if I could have named the three sports correctly. My brother had never done any triathlons either, but he is a fan of sports in general (especially basketball). (He used to play point guard on his high school team.) So that’s how I decided to start training for triathlons.

[NOTE: The process didn’t go so smoothly. I kept swimming that summer. I didn’t start running until after the Olympics ended. I had decent aerobic endurance but I had some muscle imbalance issues or weaknesses in my quads, particularly the VMO or medial part of the quad. I didn’t know this until after I started running. I ramped up the distances very quickly, getting up to a 6-mile run after just 3 weeks. But that led to a bad case of runner’s knee, which forced me to stop running for nearly two months. After a few more running injuries in the following months, I solved the problem with functional strength training and a smarter approach to base building. I finished an Olympic-distance triathlon in fall 2009. I got past the running injuries too. My last injury was in late summer 2009, although I had some shin splint/tightness problems in late 2009 and early 2010. That went away with strength training too.]

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Michael Phelps hasn’t been as dominant in recent years but he should still take home more medals this summer. The men’s road cycling events will be tricky, especially for those riders who are competing in the Tour de France. It will be a short turnaround for them.

I don’t follow track cycling that closely, but I know that GC contender Bradley Wiggins has a background in track cycling. That has served him well at this year’s Tour de France, so far.

I’ll be watching many of the cycling, triathlon, swimming and track and field events on TV or online. I’m not a big fan of gymnastics but I’ll usually watch some of the finals because it’s considered one of the key sports of the Summer Games. I usually try to watch some of the Weightlifting events too. It’s amazing to see those men and women heaving up massive amounts of weight. (I do some strength training at various times of the year, but it’s mostly focused on enhancing my endurance sports performance and helping to avoid injury. I don’t do any of the heavy lifting that the strength athletes and weightlifters do.)

By the way, Olympic weightlifting is different from powerlifting. Both involve barbells but the moves are very different.

Topic

[KelOnWheels]

@DaveK 26773 wrote:

Usually they wouldn’t race against each other – teams have a designated sprinter if they come to the line with more than one racer together. For example – if the USA came together to a bunch sprint in the Olympics they had said that Taylor Phinney would lead out Tyler Farrar for the win. If it was from the breakaway, Tejay Van Garderen and Timmy Duggan had been working for Taylor Phinney to take the win. If for some reason two teammates in a breakaway come to the line together I imagine they’d work it out together beforehand and probably wouldn’t sprint for it. Alberto Contador gave away a stage to a former teammate in last year’s Giro when they came to the line together because he was already in the race lead and didn’t need yet another stage win.

Shorter – they usually work this out in advance.

Thanks! I was wondering how that worked.

My comprehension of the road races this weekend was somewhat confused by my newly-discovered ability to fall asleep during the final approaches.

So for the men’s race I was all “Yay, Team GB!! Zzzz… Kazakhstan!”

And for the women’s race I was all “Yay, Team GB & Team USA! Zzzzz… Netherlands!”

[PotomacCyclist]

Reminder: The men’s and women’s cycling individual time trials take place tomorrow (Wednesday)!

7:30-8:45 am, Women’s time trial, LIVE – NBC Sports Network

10:00-11:05 am, Men’s time trial, LIVE (joined in progress) – NBC

The women’s TT will be rebroadcast on NBC during the late night show: 12:35-1:35 am

http://www.nbcolympics.com/tv-listings/index.html

[rcannon100]

Cool

[ATTACH=CONFIG]1473[/ATTACH]

[PotomacCyclist]

Who is this person?

http://www.london2012.com/imgml/athletes/l/1254507.png

The former guitarist for The Byrds? The bassist for The Jimi Hendrix Experience?

[KelOnWheels]

@PotomacCyclist 27124 wrote:

Who is this person?

The former guitarist for The Byrds? The bassist for The Jimi Hendrix Experience?

Time Lord.

[Certifried]

http://www.foxnews.com/sports/2012/08/02/london-police-name-cyclist-killed-by-olympic-bus648383/

so very sad, thoughts and prayers to everyone involved

[KelOnWheels]

Very sad indeed.

Interesting helmet debate spurred by the incident; some good comments: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2182586/Bradley-Wiggins-knows-lot-cycling-But-wrong-safety-benefits-wearing-helmet.html

[krazygl00]

@KelOnWheels 27238 wrote:

Very sad indeed.

Interesting helmet debate spurred by the incident; some good comments: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2182586/Bradley-Wiggins-knows-lot-cycling-But-wrong-safety-benefits-wearing-helmet.html

There is no such thing as an interesting helmet debate. (Clicks link anyway).

[mstone]

@krazygl00 27301 wrote:

There is no such thing as an interesting helmet debate. (Clicks link anyway).

There are actually a lot of interesting new points in that thread.

Made you look?

[krazygl00]

@mstone 27302 wrote:

There are actually a lot of interesting new points in that thread.

Made you look?

I am particularly susceptible to following links.

It wasn’t a total loss…it is Mail Online so there were plenty of links to other articles with racy photos

[Certifried]

Unfortunately, I don’t think a helmet would have helped this poor soul. From a first hand witness who wrote about it, the cyclist was crushed by the bus tires in the middle

[PotomacCyclist]

Will I get banned from the forum if I say that I’m a bigger Olympic swimming fan than an Olympic cycling fan? There isn’t as much drama in individual time trials and flat road stages, not like the giant mountain stages at the Tour de France. The track cycling is interesting because it’s so different from what I’m used to. But it’s kind of like a Jetsons Space Age sport to me. Olympic swimming is what inspired me to take up triathlon and thus cycling. The Games have been awesome so far.

I’ve also caught some of the more obscure sports like table tennis, water polo and team handball as well as a couple of the early soccer matches. The Olympic marathons will be another highlight for me. Until 2008, I thought marathons were boring. Now I find them fascinating. (I also thought cycling races were boring until 2008. I had two chances to see the Tour de France in person in the past, when I was in Paris for the summers. But I never bothered to look up the schedule and watch. )

[PotomacCyclist]

These track cycling races are… different. The keirin is strange. The entire group rides slowly for several laps, following an electric bike. (I’m not making this up.) Then the electric bike pacer drops out and the cyclists speed up before sprinting for the finish.

The sprint event also starts out slowly, but without a pacer. The first lap is extremely slow, maybe slower than 5 mph. Then they start to speed up in the 2nd lap. The 3rd lap becomes the all-out sprint, where they reach speeds of around 45 mph. This would be fun to watch in person, but probably not so fun to race. (Those all-out sprints have to hurt!) Supposedly a temporary velodrome is supposed to be installed at Buzzard Point in SW DC, but the initial schedule of June 2012 has come and gone. Maybe we’ll see track cycling races in DC next summer.

http://www.dcvelodrome.org/

[PotomacCyclist]

http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/cycling/track-w-keirin-m-team-pursuit-finals.html

[PotomacCyclist]

I saw some of the BMX qualifiying rounds. It’s an odd format. They have multiple “quarterfinals” except that everyone races, unless they have already accumulated enough points to move on. Then they drop out of the next qualifying heats. They get points based on their position in the race, with fewer points being better.

I probably haven’t watched a BMX race since the 2008 Olympics. Plenty of nasty crashes, almost during every heat. Most of the riders were able to get up, but one guy seemed very wobbly. He had to be helped off the course. A female U.S. rider smacked into the course head-first on one heat. Fortunately she was able to sit up soon after, and spoke with the interviewer later on. I think she was OK. The riders wore motocross-type helmets and large neck collars that help to prevent their necks from snapping back violently. It’s probably not the most dangerous Olympic sport but there is the potential for a lot of minor injuries. (Platform diving and gymnastics are probably more dangerous.)

[Author]

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