As I mentioned in my previous post, the Tour of Elk Grove (TOEG) bike races were held last weekend and I did end up going to the event all 3 days (Fri, Sat, Sun). We did not get to the Tour until later in the afternoon on Saturday which was just before a big thunderstorm hit so I did not get to see anything on Saturday. Fortunately a friend of mine was there earlier in the day and contributed many of his photos, of  Saturday’s events to the about-bicycles.com website. The photo below was contributed by Dale Kiffel.

2012 Tour of Elk Grove Race

I ended up taking a ton of photos at the TOEG and even a few short video clips on my camera. Between all of my photos and all the photos that my friend contributed it has taken me quite a while to filter through them, select the best ones and format and post them on the website but I am finally finished.

You can read the Tour of Elk Grove recap and see the photos and video on this site at the Tour of Elk Grove page. There are links to all of the photo pages and the short video at the bottom of the page.

As for the Tour of Elk Grove itself, this is a big event with professional cyclists from around the world as well as races for entry level riders. There’s even a Big Wheel Race for the Real Entry Level riders! I’ve included a few photos of this big event too :-).

This is a 3-day event with time trials on Friday, multiple stage Mens and Womens professional and amateur races on Saturday and Sunday and prize money somewhere around $75,000.

The start and finish line and main stage is located on Elk Grove Blvd at Audubon Park. The event is free and parking is where ever you can find a place (mostly in the neighborhoods on one side of the street)). The races take place on the residential and commercial roads in Elk Grove Village.

If you are into bike riding (you don’t even have to be into racing) I would think that you would find the TOEG interesting and a lot of fun. I sure did. You can get background on this event and all of the race details at the Tour of Elk Grove website at www.tourofelkgrove.com.

As for the article on this website, I have summarized the event on the main Tour of Elk Grove page and tried to capture the feel of the event, from a visitors perspective, with the photos (and short video).

The races are a lot of fun to watch even though I was not always at the finish line to see who actually won many of the races that I saw. Although there is a lot of excitement at the finish line, it is also nice to view different events in other locations (like by some of the sharp turns).

There were a number of Comcast people (with professional video equipment) at this event and I believe that it will be televised in the Chicagoland area soon. I am still working of getting the details on when and where it will be aired. Stay tuned. I’ll post an update here when I find out when it will be on.

So for those of us who were not able to fly off to France to see that little race that they have over there (le Tour de France, of course) :-), at least we have a UCI Category 2.1 international bike race of our own that we can go to right in the suburbs of Chicago!