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The Grand Tour Known as the Nature Valley Grand Prix

Can it be called a big time "pro race" when 50% of the field is amateur? Sounds like a big time amateur race to me.

Tulsa Tough, 3 crits, over $35000 in prize money for the pro,1 races. Only $1500 to win the over-all at NVGP. Doesn't cover a team's entry fee.

Stage 1 - 60 minute crit
Stage 2 - 60 mile Road Race
Stage 3 - 6 mile TT
Stage 4 - 60 minute crit
Stage 5 - 90 mile Road Race
Stage 6 - 60 minute crit

The over-all winner's time in 2008: 8hrs 15minutes. I call that my 135-mile Osceola ride (which we did two weeks ago). Better yet, 8hrs 15min is 1.5 winter rides for us.

Why are the races so short? Like I said before, these are professional athletes, this is their job. Don't give me the excuse that it is a week after Philly and they are tired. I work hard at my job, and some weeks I really hate it. Hard weeks of work are often followed by more hard weeks of work. The business world never says "oh, they just had a difficult week, let's take it easy on them the next week." In the real world, it's eat or get eaten, and if pro athletes can't hack a tough schedule, they would be better off asking me if I'd like fries with that.

I have a few ideas.
1.) Drop Mankato and go back to Redwing.
2.) Start Cannon Falls at 4pm and add at least 20 miles to the course.
3.) Five mile TTs are a joke, and boring to watch. Make it a difficult 40k TT. Make it stage 2, run it in Cannon Falls the morning of that stage.
4.) Drop the prize list for the daily stages, and add it to the over-all prize list.



Yep, that's right. I said it.

Comments

Unknown said…
..and add a couple blocks to both crits..
10:14 AM
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