In addition to training camps, it’s also the time of year we look for the release of new products. Campagnolo showed off their new electronic group and Shimano is said to be rolling out 11-speed. One other component company is doing the same – SRAM.

You might remember around the beginning of this year SRAM teased us with images of their Red group with a difference. The Chicago based company released photos of just a small section of the component – a jockey pulley, a portion of the big ring – not the entire component.

In the case of this year’s earlier roll out of the “new” Red group it turned out that the new feature was its availability in black. No other upgrades – just black. Prior to the full launch SRAM’s sponsored pros were using available social media platforms to alert the public with a daily teasing of the new group. Now SRAM is at it again.

As you are probably aware SRAM sponsored pros stared tweeting about the new 2013 Red group. Some riders have taken the time to personalize the SRAM message while other looked to have just cut and pasted it into their status update box.

Charlie Wegelius, the new director of Garmin-Cervelo tweeted,

“Some of the sponsor promotional tweets by riders that I have read lately have been pretty lame.”

Admittedly Garmin-Cervelo is using select Shimano components starting next year so there might be a bit of a bias.

Honestly I can see both sides of the marketing coin. I thought the “I choose SRAM” campaign was off the mark as everyone knows that professional riders don’t choose their components. Sure, auxiliary sponsorships can be an individual rider’s choice (optics, shoes and in the case of Alberto Contador, Giro helmet). But groups – that’s a team sponsored deal. That said, I have to hand it to SRAM for this latest slow roll out of the new Red group. It has created some buzz – good or bad it’s personal perception – they have managed to get daily coverage of this new group.

But I’m curious – what do you think? Personally I always thought SRAM was by far way ahead of any other bike company in regards to social media. Is SRAM smart in building hype or is it just needless teasing? Do the SRAM sponsored athletes’ tweets ring true or do they just read like a contractual obligation that needs to be fulfilled?

You have to excuse me for such a misstep but it was only last week that I discovered Cervélo’s co-founder Gerard Vroomen maintains a blog. I’m loving that he writes what he feels. I read his post about cars in the race caravan and couldn’t agree more; why would a VIP want to sit in a car just in the off chance a rider might drift back to a team car and request a bottle? Wine and dine the VIPs in a course side cabaña. He also takes a swipe at Versus, a network that has shown plenty of Cervélo love in the past. Tip of the hat…

Another of his posts was regarding journalism, or the lack of, in cycling. He later apologized in a follow-up post and the fantastic blog INRNG wrote his own take – which was spot on.

This takes me to my point – what is objective sports journalism? I’ve been on both sides of the table: working for a magazine and now doing my own thing, and I can sympathize with both. A magazine/web site writer, whose career depends on access, can easily get flicked if they offend a rider. For example: you won’t get the Lance Armstrong interview, that is guaranteed to sell a crap load of issues/ hits on the web site, if you’re not on Team Armstrong. At the same time you’re no longer reporting “news” but just pushing out general information or that rider’s own agenda.

Major news media outlets have employed bloggers who specialize in sports and politics issues. BigGovernment.com is the site that got the Rep. Weiner scoop. Of course this is just one type of blogger and you can find any flavor you like in the interwebs.

When you’re a hobby blogger you don’t have to worry about upsetting an advertiser because you didn’t treat their rider/product with enough love. To a certain point they can write with impunity (sure they shouldn’t/can’t go hog-wild with half-baked thoughts or they’ll probably end up with a “cease and desist letter”) and as a reader you need to be aware what their reliability or biases are. Of course there are sponsored bloggers whose main purpose is to do product placement in their writing, but that’s a whole different category.

Personally I’ve felt the effects of not toeing the company line when Comcast/NBC/Versus terminated my contract because of my infamous Lance Armstrong twitter exchange. Bottom line I was told a producer at Versus complained because they didn’t want their access to Armstrong compromised. Even when wounded, Armstrong is still the Golden Calf that no one wants to offend. Major media outlets don’t want to compromise their ability to get that pre-stage interview when the rider gives such golden quotes as, “My legs feel good.”

I want to start off by saying thank you to everyone that sent me a message or told me that they were thinking about my dad. It was truly remarkable the outpouring of kind words – it meant a lot.

My twice a week blog for Versus Cycling has been one reason why writing for my own personal blog here has become increasingly rare, usually just for some random Floyd Landis interview that might be a bit too much for the Versus lawyers to handle. The other reason shows a bit more of my serious side – yes, there’s more to me than armadillos and beer drinking.

As a resident of the southeast I was surprised there wasn’t one organized cycling web site that contained race announcements as well as local cycling news like we had back in Southern California. So with that in April CarolinaCyclingNews.com was founded. The site lists all the cycling activities as well as cycling news in the southeast region. With the professional cycling championships taking place this weekend in Greenville it was a perfect opportunity to partner with Hincapie Sportswear and do a live chat. The weekend of US Pro coverage presented by Hincapie Sportswear will get kicked off at 9:00pm Friday with a live chat from Carolina Cycling News HQ here in Greenville, SC. We’ll continue providing live coverage all weekend through Sunday. In the live chat there will be video and photos from our many Carolina Cycling News corespondents from various points on the course. This will be the best way to stay on top of all the action over the race weekend.

Our company Browne Eye Media will be attending Interbike next week and will bring you live shenanigans through our live chat here at my Browne Eye blog. I’ll also be covering Interbike for Versus.com, so watch for my daily posts. I’ll be returning to CrossVegas although due to lack of training my racing may end in a spectacular crash followed by beer drinking.

Johnson is pumped for Tibor ("It's going to be a shit show") and Kentucky

With the lack of racing this week I’ve had to make do with news of race announcements, race cancellations, team announcements, doping allegations, very creative graphs and of course new electronic gadgets to lust over. So yeah, it was a full week for me.

First off we’d been hearing rumbling earlier this week that the UCI had Louisville, Kentucky on the short list for the cyclocross world championships for 2013. Louisville and particularly the U.S. Gran Prix of Cyclocross have a good reputation of promoting and running a high-level race. I attended the November USGP in New Jersey a couple of months ago. It seemed well run but I can’t be sure, we were all pretty drunk for most of that weekend. Tim Johnson Skyped me yesterday from Tabor, just prior to going to diner (and massage) to tell me how pumped he was about the race being awarded to Louisville. This will give the sport of cyclocross some legitimacy here in the States and hopefully a wake-up call to USA Cycling that they need to throw some dollars at this discipline. As a warm up the UCI also granted Louisville the Master’s Cyclocross World Championships in 2012. I’m planning on being there and probably mostly sober. I’m told that the Louisville Park and Recreation Department is planning on building a cyclocross park. How cool is that? I say take a hunk of property and make a BMX track, cross course and a velodrome. At least that’s what I’m going to do when I win the lottery and I’ll name it The Browne Eye Sporting Complex.

And speaking of rumblings, I’d been hearing for a while about the formation of a cycling team with Yahoo as the title sponsor. With ex-Rock Racing rider Haldane Morris directing, this northern California based team is an elite amateur squad. I was far too optimistic and hoped it was going to be a pro team. Morris wants to take the team to a professional level, unfortunately half of his squad is over 30 and two of those riders are over 40. Those older guys would need to be jettisoned like used water bottles in order to satisfy the UCI’s rule on the average rider age of a team. Also there’s the fact that Yahoo, the company, hasn’t had that great of a 2009. While I like the idea of an elite team being formed with a well known company as a title sponsor, I’m not so excited seeing that half the team are master racers. We need to develop young riders, not guys who are still living the 12k dream.

This is why there's no TT up Paris Mountain - 28 degrees and snow

One race cancellation that hit me hard personally was the Paris Mountain time trial here in Greenville. Apparently there was a very strong chance of snow, ice and rain putting the race into the Jens Factor 5 zone. So for safety’s sake the time trial was postponed till March. I had been planning for weeks to make a run at my personal best up the hill. I had been doing interval training and marking off timing landmarks on the 2.2 mile road (at the halfway point where the road slightly levels off I had hoped to be at 5:50). Now I’ll be reduced to training indoors. However I have a great excuse to try out an indoor training video from Suffer Fest. They sent me a copy of Fight Club and I’ll let you know how that does, but I can guess it will be ugly.

Speaking of weather, as a very-recently-former Californian I am still wrapping my head around the fact that there is adverse weather conditions. And by adverse I mean the temperature drops below 60 degrees. But like a cockroach I have adapted and survived in the often inhospitable 40 degree temperatures that I’ve been reduced to riding in. But to make sure I’m not riding in too inhospitable weather conditions I consult my Jens Factor chart from the Cyclocosm site. Cyclocosm designed a graph that tells you what factor of climatic hell you are about to ride in and how you should dress. This chart is so important that I have created a spot on my training log to record what Jens Factor I rode in. As someone who has had his fair share of chemistry classes and is a well known bike dork, I’m mad at myself for not creating the Periodic Table of Professional Cycling that Cyclocosm also created. He has taken all the major, and not so major races, and broke them down into the periodic table with the three Grand Tours at the top going all the way down to races no longer on the race calendar such as the Tour de Georgia. Do yourself a favor and don’t waste your time printing them. Just go to his site, purchase the posters or a shirt and fly your bike dork flag proudly.

Don't they make a cute couple?

Not too shocking is that Riccardo Ricco’s girlfriend, recent mom and second place finisher in the Italian cyclocross national championships, Vania Rossi was popped for CERA. Ricco was all set to return to professional cycling on the Flaminia team, but I have to be thinking that the team is going to unleash the lawyers and get rid of Ricco before it’s too late. I can’t wait to hear some kind of public statement from either one of them. “She was doing what? I had no idea what those viles in the fridge were for. I assumed it was breast milk!” My career advice would be for Ricco to return to teaching Spin classes to cougars and not ride a bike professionally. Ever.

Finally the biggest hype of the week goes to Apple for their launch of the iPad. I won’t even go into the well publicized fact that they couldn’t have chosen a worse name for a product. Regardless, it won’t do flash, it isn’t a phone, has no USB or HDMI ports, no camera, no multi-tasking and yet I still want one. Damn you Apple hype machine!

LATE BREAKING NEWS:

Well I said it was going to happen and it did, Tom Zirbel’s “B” sample came back positive for DHEA. Tom says on his own blog, “There will probably be a hearing in a few months whereas I will proclaim my innocence. We all know the drill! How many times have we been through this with this sport? I even secured one of those lawyer fellas to help me through this. We are still attempting to figure out how this happened and I’m optimistic that we’ll have an answer in time for the hearing.” Unfortunately we do know the drill. I hope Tom can mount some kind of defense and explain how it happened, but he’s done.

Vania Rossi issued a public statement regarding her positive for CERA! “I’ve never taken banned substances and I especially haven’t done it now because I’m a mum and I’ve been breast feeding my baby boy since last July.” Apparently she’s going with the tried and not so true, ‘Just had a baby so no way would I take anything to harm my child’ defense. All I know is get an eye on that kid when he gets older. He’s going to kick ass!

HTC-Columbia is killing it at the Tour Down Under

As January winds down the first UCI race of the year is almost complete. The Tour Down Under seems to have been tough enough in 2009 for Armstrong to cause him to have a gut check on whether his return to professional racing was a good idea. This year it’s a different story. He’s been in breakaways and mixing it up. His fellow RadioShackers have also been at the front and have been top three in some stage finishes – so far so good. Now if they can score a win this Saturday… Team Sky came in with the plan of making a race day debut splash, which they accomplished with Greg Henderson taking the win at the Cancer Council Helpline Classic. But from there on it has been Andre Greipel of HTC-Columbia putting on a daily sprint clinic. I know it’s way too early to make predictions but damn, HTC-Columbia seems to have picked up where they left off last year, dominating anything that ended with a sprint finish. Once Cav gets his choppers sorted out he’ll once again be racking up the wins as well. One bit of advice for Cav: Resist the urge to go with Team Sky. I can’t put my finger on it but my Spidey senses tingle in a bad way with the thought of him joining Sky. When his contract expires I fully expect him to hear the siren call of racing for a British pro team like any American who wasn’t racing for 7-Eleven in the ’80’s.

While teams like HTC-Columbia, RadioShack and Team Sky seem to be enjoying a healthy budget, other squads don’t seem to be faring as well. Milram, Caisse d Epargne and Saxo Bank as title sponsors are getting out of the cycling game at the conclusion of 2010. Also, Quick Step is cutting back on their racing schedule due to budget constraints. Here in the States races and teams are scaling back. One rider is taking the situation in hand and is becoming the master of his own domain. Burke Swindlehurst, a strong climber on the Bissell squad last year, is going solo in ‘10. He has cobbled together several individual sponsors and is going to be competing in both road and mountain biking. Is this the new cycling sponsorship business model in these tough economic times? In mountain biking teamwork is not a factor, however road racing is another thing all together. In crits and road races he’s going to have to rely on being in the right moves at the right time with no margin of error. That said, in a climbing race it can become mano-a-mano and Swindlehurst can climb with the best of them domestically. I’m always a fan of the underdog, so I’m betting on Burke to pop up here and there on the leader’s board. I have suggestion for Burke: install a PayPal donation widget on your website. There’s fans out there that love to see you race and can appreciate you being a fly in the ointment. Plus your musical insights are priceless, so why not let people throw a couple of bucks your way.

One last comment I have is regarding a Twitter post I read from David Zabriskie and a few Garmin-Transitions riders. It looks like today was Media Training Day for the team. I’ve sat in on a few and if you saw the bio film, “Blood, Sweat and Gears” you can see how much the media is loved by riders and staff alike. I’m curious now that most riders have Twitter accounts as well as Facebook pages, how much random, unfiltered Twittering is going to occur. As a personal plea don’t let the P.R. people completely neuter your thoughts. Those 140 characters offer a tiny glimpse of who you are as a person beyond the rolling billboard you’ve become. And that glimpse behind the curtain causes people to become fans of a sport that could use a few more.

So I’m waiting for my flight and as usual my mood for dealing with all this travel is at a low. I’ve already started to listen to my “Moody” playlist on my iPod. At least I have a poodle on my 11 hour flight.

I'm the LAX airport on my way back to Europe. This time it's to see
the new Dura-Ace group. Out first stop is Germany and then we are
supposed to see the Tour. I'll take photos and post them on the ROAD
website for your entertainment and education.

It’s that time of year where companies unveil their ’09 products. I’m in San Jose for the Specialized launch and right now I’m in the back seat of a large sedan that is taking me to my hotel. I’ll blog about the new stuff Specialized is going to dazzle us with. For now though
when I get to the hotel I’m going to hook up with my bff and tip a couple back. I love junkets…

Thanks for reading.

This is my mantra when traveling to a foreign country

Today I fly to Milan for another bike show. I haven’t had a trip in a while that has required a passport, so my anxiety about this trip has ratcheted up a couple of notches. By nature I tend to worry. I used to worry about flying across the country, now that doesn’t concern me. However flying over the Atlantic to a country where I don’t speak my language concerns me. But it’s nice to know I’m not alone. I’ve already had a fellow editor from another magazine call me with his possible concerns.

Concerned Editor: “Are they going to be at the airport to greet us?”

Me: “I don’t know.”

Concerned Editor: “Are you bringing cycling clothes?”

Me: “Nope, I’m already bringing too much crap.”

Concerned Editor: “I’ll call you when I get in.”

Me: “You can try, but I don’t have my phone set up for international travel yet.” And I thought I worried.

For my fellow editors out there who read this blog I’m bringing these items: camera, several pairs of jeans, ROAD branded shirts and sweater, three pairs of shoes, and my neon orange Waffle House cap. Feel free to substitute the ROAD branded shirts for your own magazine’s shirts. Maybe we can have a t-shirt swap at the end of the trip. While I am gone, Tim will be laying out the magazine and applying the finishing touches. This junket is a bit of bad timing in relation to when the magazine is due, but it’s a trip to Milan for crying out loud. I gotta go! Plus I’ve heard that it’s the fashion capital of the world and they are having amazing sales right now. I’m not sure what amazing sales mean, but I bet its still more than what I spend at Old Navy.

I’ll try and blog from the show floor if they have wifi, so check back often. I’ll have images of products and the random stuff that is guaranteed to happen when I go on the road…