Peter’s blog

This was reported on Google’s blog. Here is the direct link on the Tour de France website

Posted by Peter Birch, Product Manager

I don’t know about you, but with the action and excitement heating up in the Tour de France, it’s hard to keep track of exactly where everybody is riding. When you’re trying to understand the Herculean effort that these cyclists go through in stages like L’Alpe d’Huez, or which streets in Paris the final stage will pass through, 2D maps just aren’t as compelling.

But now you can make sense of it all by flying around the route yourself. A new KML file available on the official Tour de France website lets you see the entire course overlaid on satellite imagery for Google Earth.

This special Google Earth tour is available in French, German, and Spanish as well as English. Pick your language on the Le Tour site, and once you’ve done that, look for the “Tour on Google Earth” link in the lefthand navigation under Route. Then you can see the starts, the finishes, even information on each of the cities along the way. Just move the KML file into your “My Places” folder on Google Earth, and follow along day by day. (Did you know that Huy has the unique privilege of hosting stages for the Tour de France, the Giro and the Tour of Belgium this year? We didn’t either.)

Be sure to try out the tilt feature to see the truly daunting magnitude of all of those climbs where riders are battling it out in this year’s wide-open race. “Beyond Category” climbs? No thanks — we’ll stick to the flats and leave those verticals to the pros!

Technorati Tags: cycling, Tour de France

Last Saturday I entered my first ever mountain bike race. It was called “12 hours of darkness” and as the name suggests, it was held during the night. The race consisted of trying to do as many laps as possible in the given 12 hours. We had a mixed team of 6 and were able to change riders every lap. There were some people doing it solo, some teams of 2 and some teams of 4. About 100 people took part in the race, making this a low key, no frills, best fun ever event.

The event was held at Penrose State Forest, which for those who have been to Canberra, is near the Bunadoon service centre (yes the one with the golden arches). I took my GPS along with me and have a

track available for download. Just load the track into Google Earth and you will see exactly where the race was held.

There was a DJ who played tunes all through the night and he even managed to play some Pink Floyd.

More information on the event can be found at the 12 hours of darkness website

Technorati Tags: cycling, mountain biking

The annual Cycle Sydney event rolls into action again on Sunday, 23 October 2005. This is an excellent chance to ride across a car-less Sydney Harbour Bridge and to enjoy the streets and sites of Sydney with thousands of other cyclists. If you have never taken part, you just don’t know what you are missing.

More information is available from the Sydney spring cycle website here

Technorati Tags: cycling, sydney