"Tour of California" Bike Race comes through town!
The Amgen Tour of California is going on throughout California this week, and Stage 3 of the race passed barely two miles from our front door! With four avid cyclists in the family (and one Sunday rider), the opportunity to glimpse some of the world's best cyclists was too good to pass up. So we bicycled over to Ygnacio Valley Road and watched the racers climb the Limeridge grade between the towns of Walnut Creek and Clayton.
(click photo for video)
At this point the riders were about halfway through the 115-mile Stage. Four riders had broken away from the peloton and had nearly an 8-minute lead on the rest of the pack. (The peloton would catch up to them about 30 miles later, out on Byron Road in the Central Valley.)
It was thrilling to watch them go by as they started up the hill, followed by a half-dozen chase cars with very expensive spare bikes on top.
A little more than 7 minutes later the horde of riders in the peloton arrived, followed by a veritable army of support vehicles!
Posted by Dan 05/15/2012, revised 05/17/2012 by Dan