It was a long time in the making, but it’s here at last—and just in time to provide a little context for the kick-off to the 2010 Tour. While you wait for this year’s results to roll in, you can follow last year’s race from start to finish in dozens of full-color photos, brought together on twenty 8½- by 11-inch pages.

Maybe you raced in last year’s Tour. Or maybe you watched from the roadside and cheered your favorites on. Either way, Tour of the Battenkill 2009 will bring the memories flooding back. Here’s a sample:

Hint: You can enlarge the view by clicking on the Full Screen Mode icon in the menu next to the navigation bar at the bottom edge of the preview.

What’s it cost? $19.95 (plus shipping and tax). That’s less than a 24-pack of recovery gel. Order the Tour of the Battenkill 2009 Photo Book on our Lulu.com page To get there, just click through the cover image in the sidebar. Or you can click on this button, instead:

Then follow the instructions on the page.

This year’s Tour will be bigger than ever. It now spans two weekends. The pro-am race was run yesterday, Saturday, April 10th. Next Saturday, April 17th, will mark the first run for a new event, the Ride 2 Recovery CycleFest, a benefit ride for wounded war veterans. Then, on Sunday, April 18th, the Tour reaches its climax in the pro invitational. This is where pro teams like Trek-Livestrong go for the gold.

Now I don’t race, and I never have, but I’ve a got a personal connection with the Tour nonetheless. The gravel roads and steep hills around Cambridge, New York, are as familiar to me as the veins on the back of my hand. I grew up in the shadow of those self-same hills, and I cycled down those same roads to swim and fish in the fabled Battenkill. The Tour takes me back to the days of my youth.

I know what it’s like to spin almost effortlessly down the wide shoulder of New York’s Route 313 early in the day, when the sun is still hidden behind Goose Egg Ridge. And I remember the eerie rumble that followed me as I sped under the wooden beams of the covered bridge on Eagleville Road. I’ve struggled to stay upright on rain-slick cobbles and rim-deep mud on Rich and Robertson Roads in spring, and I’ve choked on dust when I passed a tractor on Mountain Road on a hot day in a dry summer. I know the mountain views, the white clapboard houses, and the picture-postcard farm fields. So—even though I don’t race—I’m riding along with every racer in the Tour.

Of course, you don’t have to have grown up in the shadow of Vermont’s Green Mountains to marvel at this challenging, beautiful country, and you don’t need to have ridden the roads in and around Cambridge, New York, to get excited about the Tour. Your personal connection can begin right here. Just bookmark this page and check back often in the days to follow. If you can’t make it to Cambridge for the Tour, we’ll do our best to bring the Tour to you. See you on the course!

 
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The results of the pro-am event of the 2010 Tour of the Battenkill have come in. Here’s a podium shot of the Pro/Cat 1 Men’s race:

First across the line was Brian Jensen of TradeWind Energy/Trek Stores, with a time of 3:21:42. Second was Daniel Zmolik of AXA Equitable Cycling Team/CRCA, and third was WIlliam Dugan of Team Type 1. Well done! We’ll be bring you more photos of this exciting event ASAP. Meanwhile, here are the pro/cat 1 results, right off the bulletin board:

And here are results for women’s categories:

Now for the men:

And here are the results for juniors:

You can find a PDF version of the results at Atwood Racing Services website.

 
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The Tour of the Battenkill has gotten too big for a single weekend, so it’s spread over three days this year, beginning with today’s pro-am race. The Ride 2 Recovery to benefit injured military veterans comes next, exactly one week from now, on Saturday, the 17th of April. Then it’s the pro teams’ turn: the pro invitational (UCI 1.2) will be held on Sunday, April 18th. The course is impressive, with plenty of dirt and plenty of climbing. (Check out the interactive course map on MapMyRide.) Our photographer Tony Jancek and his able assistants are planning to capture the action on all three days, and they’ll get their pictures to us as soon as possible. So check back often to see our coverage of America’s Queen of the Classics unfold!

Are you a racer? Do you want to know if we have photos of you? Then just drop us a line, describing your bike and your team colors—and giving us any other details which might help us pick you out of the crowd. We’ll be uploading photos to our Zenfolio Tour of the Battenkill Gallery as we process them. If we caught you in our viewfinders, you’ll be able to buy high quality prints at a very reasonable price.

Check here for results on Saturday’s pro-am race. Race articles can always be found in our “Tour of the Battenkill” department.