What’s Jim up to now!

EverythingWestport.com

Follow Jim LeBelle’s odyssey as he trains for his 3000 mile race across America!

Tuesday, June 2, 2009
We are very excited to announce a great new sponsorship with Owater out of Concord, Ma. Our team will drink Owater exclusively while attempting to win the Race Across America. Owater makes great tasting sports drinks!

Visit Owater at www.Owater.com

We are leaving in 10 days so please check us out on the RAAM web site to follow our progress. We will also be posting videos daily and there will be a great amount of info on our Twitter page.

Join our twitter page at http://twitter.com/teambuzzardsbay

Click on image to enlarge.

Monday, May 4, 2009
The team did their first practice race with the entire crew and all four racers this weekend! It was a huge success as they raced for 140 miles from 3pm to 1am to practice the racer switches and team exchanges. They also practiced the logistical process involved in two support vans and an RV following the racer while navigating the racers through the dark on country roads. Overall it was a huge help to experience the process for real. There were challenges and decisions made to remain fast as a team in the safest manor. Some of the real life issues that came up helped the team to identify future solutions and we are confident the training race was a significant help. Later this week you will be able to watch some videos from the practice race and view photos on our photo page!

Tuesday, March 24, 2009
www.TeamSaveBuzzardsBay.org had a great dinner fund raiser March 21st to raise awareness for cycling, promote the Coalition For Buzzards Bay and raise the needed money to compete to WIN the 2009 Race Across America! We would like to thank everyone who attended. The evening was packed with people, live acoustic music by Spindrift, excellent food by Rachel's Lakeside in Dartmouth, over 50 incredible silent
auction items and even a magic show by Skip Daniels!

Overall it was a huge success and we truly appreciate all of the local businesses who supported the event with their generous donations. If you would like to check out some pictures from the evening please click on our photo page.

Thank you to everyone who attended and remember that we invite you to join us on a group ride at Village Bicycle every Sunday!

Click here for more EverythingWestport.com photos of the dinner!

Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Jim, Tim and Andy traveled to Annapolis, MD with our Team Director Jim Bernard for the RAAM training this past weekend. It was a great time and very helpful! We learned about the many rules which fill a large three ring binder while getting to speak with other athletes and teams who have raced RAAM before. We really enjoyed hearing about their first hand experiences. Overall we feel great about our team's chances at winning the 4 man category this year. Once critical thing we learned was how important the crew members are to the team's chances of winning and being safe. The crew on the team makes the biggest difference more than we realized. You may view pictures from our RAAM trip on our photo page.

Tuesday February 24, 2009

Exciting News! The team had a very successful training trip to Arizona! They accomplished all of their climbing goals and now have a solid feel for what it will take to be prepared for RAAM. Check out the pictures from Arizona on our photos page.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Jim and Tim will be traveling to Tucson, Arizona to meet and train with their coaches to establish race fitness data February 19-23. They will be climbing Mount Lemmon (photo left) which is in the Santa Catalina Mountains located in the Coronado National Forest north of Tucson, Arizona, United States. It is 9,157 feet above sea-level, and receives approximately 180 inches of snow annually.

The goal is simply to get outdoor riding time in and measure their power wattage, heart rate and other critical numbers. From the training in Arizona they will be able to determine key thresholds and plan out the final three months of training that will need to be completed before Jim and Tim compete in the Race Across America!

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Since we last spoke I wanted to update you on my race. I am very excited to announce that Carmichael Training is sponsoring me. Visit their web site now! This is the same organization that trains Lance Armstrong. My trainer is Dean Golich out of Colorado Springs. He is a Platinum level coach who means the only person better is Chris Carmichael yet he is with Lance now for his comeback. So I am thrilled because Dean coaches Carl Edwards (Nascar #2 racer) Allison Dunlop World Champion MT Biker and other elite athletes. His services usually cost $2k per month so this is huge.

I also attached a current PR letter so you have up to date info. My website has some new updates too. You can view my training routes and other cool data tomorrow. This will allow you to see everything I have going on for training. I am using as Computrainer System (photo left) which allows me to train on ultra endurance courses and even last years RAAM route. It creates the same climbs and tracks all of my output like power watts, HR, cadence, elevations, averages and more.

So some very cool stuff going on and I encourage you to keep in touch and visit my website every now and then:

http://www.villagebicycle.com/RAAM.html

Above photos: Computrainer System used by Jim.

Below is a link to a recent article that was in the 12 local papers, and next week I will be on a few TV news stations talking about the race:

Westport cyclist trains for grueling coast-to-coast race

By Bruce Burdett of Westport Shorelines

WESTPORT — The Tour de France is brutal, but the event Westport’s Jim LeBelle is training for takes bike racing to whole new levels of misery. The Race Across America (RAAM) is just that — … read more . . .

It would be great to say a big Thank You to Lees Market too as they just sponsored me and mostly it feels great when a local business is willing to help me with this dream like you have with Everythingwestport.com!

Thank you again for your help!

Learn about sponsorships at http://www.active.com/donate/jimsraam

Watch for more news here on Jim’s progress!