Tour of California

The Tour of California began earlier this week and like most of you, I have been frantically searching the web for any kind of race coverage. My go to source of cycling news, the daily peloton, failed to have any detailed race coverage although I like that they have the stage and GC times. Eurosport really is more like a cycling tabloid with audio and video clips. They mentioned the stage winners but give no kind of analysis. Velonews seems to have the best coverage with a quality summary of the day's ride and plenty of good pictures to go along with it. Then finally I ran across the official tour of california website (duh...should have searched for that first). AWESOME site complete with play by play coverage and if your connection speed is fast enough, live audio and video!! http://www.amgentourofcalifornia.com/ This site is one of the best websites in general that I have ever encountered. Today's coverage begins at 10am PST (thats 1pm for all you EST people). It is very difficult to use words to fully describe this site so it is really best if you check it out. Be sure to click on the Tour Tracker to see the video and the maps and all of the cool stuff they have on the site. In other cycling news I discovered this morning that the Grand Rapids based health insurance company Priority Health has a team on the pro tour this year. They boast the fact that they are the ONLY Michigan pro cycling team. http://www.teampriorityhealth.com/ They are currently racing in the tour of California and rider Ben Jacques-Maynes of the Priority Health team is currently sitting third in the GC behind Jason Donald of Slipstream-Chipotle and Tour de France veteran Levi Leipheimer of Discovery Channel.
One more update before I go. The Tour de Benzie website is still under construction and progress is very slow. School and wedding planning have consumed my life and soon I will add work to the mix making things even more complicated. With spring break around the corner I should be able to make up a lot of lost ground. Keep your eye on this blog for further updates or just keep checking http://tourdebenzie.com I'll do my best to report on my new favorite team in cycling, Team Priority Health (gotta root for the local boys). But truth be told, I'm only going to the top of the hill.