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Summertime at Portland International Raceway on Monday nights means bicycle racing. For 2008’s series we are featuring clinics to introduce women to the sport. These clinics coincide with the Monday night races. This summer will be the 12th season of bicycle racing on Monday nights at PIR. The new clinics will run on the second Mondays of the month, and will focus on the basics of how to get started in racing. There will be a brief intro talk prior to the race start, followed by debriefing after the race.

Cadel Evans almost won Flèche Wallonne on Wednesday and will line up as one of the favorites for Sunday’s Liège-Bastogne-Liège, but July is what’s on his mind these days. Second at Flèche, the Silence-Lotto captain said a strong performance in the Ardennes classics is just an appetizer for what he hopes are better things to come in the Tour de France.

Health-Net-Maxxis rider has been front and center for this Tour de Georgia, grabbing the KOM lead on stage 1 and figuring in a long four-man breakaway on Wednesday's stage 3. Pipp's coach Frank Overton has been sharing Pipp's wattage readings and providing VeloNews readers with some analysis after every stage. He's tickled pink that Pipp has been playing such a central role in the race.

Go211.com is teaming up with BMX pro rider Tara Llanes in hosting an online auction to help raise funds to offset Llanes' ever growing medical costs. The auction begins April 25th at 5pm EST with the bidding ending on May 9th at 5pm EST.

Llanes was seriously injured on September 1st, 2007 while racing at the Jeep KOM Finals. At the present time she is paralyzed from the waist down. She has been working intensely at physical therapy and has very high hopes that not only will she walk again, but ride again as well.

Fairwheel Bikes makes colored hoods for recent Campagnolo and Shimano's Dura-Ace, Ultegra and 105 shift/brake levers. Hoods for SRAM levers will be available later this year. The company says the hoods are exact replacements and are available in six colors. Suggested retail is $25.

http://spotted.savannahnow.com/galleries/index.php?id=333738

German rider Jorg Jaksche, whose one-year doping suspension ends on June 30, will give himself till July to find a new team, he told Eurosport Germany on Wednesday. The 31-year-old, who has previously ridden for Telekom (1998-2000), ONCE (2001-03), CSC (2004) and Liberty Seguros (2005-06), owned up on his own initiative to have been involved in the blood-doping network of Spanish doctor Eufemiano Fuentes though he has never failed a test.

Casey Gibson was back at work during Stage 3 of the 2008 Tour de Georgia. Here's the action from his point of view.

The big stiff head tube is good for sprinting and going downhill; Henderson did both faster than anyone else today. A tapered steerer and asymmetric set of bearings are housed within the head tube.

The SRM captured some rather large numbers on Wednesday. Giant uses a proprietary bottom bracket system that fits Shimano’s standard Hollowtech 2 crank.

The rear brake is routed externally except for the final stretch of housing, which is routed through a pierced top tube so that it doesn’t rub the riders legs.

The new version highlights the fine-tuning a manufacturer like Giant does before a product is released to the public. The only sure change we know of at this time is external routing for the derailleur cables. The current version has internally routed derailleur cables.

Henderson’s Giant TCR Advanced SL. This is the same version the team used at the Tour of California. Rumor has it that there will be a new version of the bike out soon.

Highroad’s Greg Henderson went pretty quick to win Wednesday’s stage 3 sprint — 81.3 kph to be exact; that’s more than 50 mph. We were able to take a look at the maximum values on Hendy’s SRM after the stage. Assuming he was putting out his hardest effort of the race in the final sprint it took 1250 watts to win.

While the cages are by Arundel, a brand that’s very prominent across the domestic teams in Georgia.

The SwissStop pads are new to the team. It switched to the Yellow King pads after Redlands. Right now, the mechanics are experimenting to find a pad that provides consistent brake performance in every condition. So far they’re happy with how the Yellow King performs.

The SRAM cogset shaves weight, too.

Fabio Calabria is the smallest rider on the team. He rides a 49cm Orca that skirts the UCI 6.8 kilo limit. On our scale it weighed 6.94 kilos with Zipp’s 404 wheelset. He will ride Zipp’s 202 wheelset on Saturday’s stage to deal with the Brasstown Bald finishing climb. The 202 wheelset drops his bike’s weight below the limit and the team does not plan to add any weight to compensate. “They haven’t been checking the bikes that closely here,” said Davidson. "We’re not against the spirit of the rules, he continued, and we believe there is a certain level of flexibility, efficiency and understanding when it comes to interpreting them. We’re on production stuff that consumers can buy, it’s not like we’re showing up with stuff that no other team can have, so we’ll make sure the bike’s not flagrantly lower, but he’s going to ride the 202s on Brasstown."

J.J. Haedo isn’t the only rider toughing it out at this year’s Tour of Georgia. Team Type 1’s Matt Wilson, too, has a broken wrist and is racing in a soft cast. While pain isn’t too much of a problem, the cast on his right hand and wrist doesn’t allow him enough freedom of movement to easily operate his right Double Tap shifter.

After two slight misfires, High Road’s heavy artillery got its coordinates dialed Wednesday, firing Greg Henderson into the yellow jersey with an explosive win on stage 3 of the Tour de Georgia. Toyota-United’s Ivan Dominguez, winner of stage 1, lost the leader’s jersey when he came off the group in the hilly closing circuits of Gainesville.

Stefano Garzelli (Acqua e Sapone) won stage 2 of the Giro del Trentino on Wednesday. The Italian took the 178km leg from Torbole to Torri del Benaco ahead of compatriots Mauro Finetto (CSF) and Riccardo Chiarini (LPR). Jure Colcer (LPR) took the leader’s jersey from Volodymyr Zagorodny (NGC Medical-OTC Industrial), the winner of Tuesday’s opening time trial, a 9.7km race against the clock from Arco to Riva del Garda.

Dutch phenom Marianne Vos outgunned her challengers on the painfully steep slopes of the Mur de Huy to take a repeat win at the Flèche Wallonne women’s World Cup. Vos scaled the brutal kilometer-long pitch the fastest, dropping Marta Bastionelli (Italian National), Judith Arndt (High Road) and three-time winner Nicole Cooke (Great Britain) near the summit to take the fourth World Cup round of 2008. The victory was reminiscent of her 2007 victory, which saw Vos ride a tiring Cooke up the 25 percent pitch, then sprint to victory in the closing meters.

Mickey with one of his newest designs that’s due out late summer. It’s a high-pressure road pump paired to an aluminum bottle cage. The pump has the same stroke as a full-sized frame pump, but collapses into a smaller package. The presta-only pump weighs 100-grams and is rated to a pressure of 160 psi.

The current line consists of the following multi-tools, pumps and seat bags, plus hydration packs.

Michael Kozuschek founded Truvativ, built it up and sold it to SRAM. As part of the deal he had to sign a non-compete contract. SRAM doesn’t make accessories so that’s where Mickey, as he’s known, directed his creative efforts and founded Lezyne. He’s shown here with one of his CNC machined mini pumps.

The SX stem is intended for heavier duty applications including cyclocross and mountain use. It will be available in 90mm, 100mm and 110mm lengths initially; a freeride version available in 70mm and 80mm lengths will be released later this summer.

The ágilis crank is CNC machined; the process includes a have hole drilled down from the top of the crank arm to a point just before the pedal threads to hollow both the drive and non-drive arm; the drill hole is then capped with the red bolt. On the non-drive side the bolt also offers adjustment to compensate for different bottom bracket shell widths.

The crank comes standard with a Rotor bottom bracket built with Enduro bearings. The bottom bracket design is also available in a ceramic version built in partnership with Ceramic Speed. The design is Shimano compatible.

Rotor’s ágilis crank now has the option of a mountain double spider with 110/74 spacing. The new crank will initially be available with a 40/27 Q-Ring chainring combination. The crank bolts use Rotor’s Dual Thread Tech or DTT, where the fixing bolts thread into both the bottom bracket spindle and the crank arm. The design integrates the bolt as a structural component of the crank as apposed to using it as a mere clamping mechanism, says Rotor spokesmen.

Wallace didn’t win Saturday morning, but just riding it makes him feel like a winner

Ridley added a decal in case the single chainring and cog didn’t tip you off

The bike is made out of the same 24-ton HM carbon used in some of its road and cyclocross models

And single speed dropouts

The new bikes are hardtails with plenty of tire clearance

Ridley has a new prototype mountain bike called the Ignite. Only two exist in the world, both bikes are owned by Thule employees. Eric Wallace and Karl Wiedemann raced their two-off bikes on Saturday morning in Sea Otter’s single-speed race.

While the caliper looks the same the size of the pads is increased over the previous version