Lucas Euser, In Conversation - Part One

This week at the Sports Basement in San Francisco, we sat down and talked at length to pro cyclist Lucas Euser.

Lucas told the crowd in SF how he got started in the sport, what life is like on a pro cycling team, dealing with a serious injury and his plans for the future, both on and off the bike.

In part one of our conversation, Lucas goes back to his roots, growing up in Napa, riding BMX and mountain bikes, and eventually making it on to the Garmin-Slipstream pro team.

But it's not all guts and glory. Lucas reveals some of the less-attractive aspects of the sport, including the salaries for beginning pros, in this CycleTo audio file.

Riding with Team VBF - "The Opportunity of a Lifetime"

EDITOR'S NOTE: When we offered a ride with the Vera Bradley Foundation team as one of our recent CycleTo freebies, little did we know that we'd pick an honest-to-goodness journalist as the winner.

Katherine Fuller is a San Antionio-based writer and rider. She agreed to recap her experience with Team VBF for all of us.

Here are the words and pictures from inside a pro cycling team's training camp, seen through the eyes of a CycleTo freebie winner.

Fahlin Out - Emilia on the Sidelines in California

Swedish cycling champion Emilia Fahlin was forced to watch from the sidelines on Saturday and Sunday.

A nasty cold kept Emilia off the bike for both races of central California's Merco Cycling Classic, so she spent the days in the usual roles of spectator and and babysitter for Sophie, teammate Ina-Yoko Tentenberg's dog.

Emilia says she will return to racing in two weeks, but...BREAKING NEWS ALERT...it looks like she won't be back in NorCal to defend her title in the women's criterium at the Tour of California on May 16th in Sacramento. Bigger, better races beckon in Europe for the HTC-Columbia star.

First things first. Emilia talks about her lingering illness, and her plans to get back on the bike, in this CycleTo video.

This Week's Freebie - Bigger and Better...and Bars!

We're making some changes to our always-popular freebies here are CycleTo...and we think you'll like what we're doing.

Starting this week, we're offering bigger, better freebies. And we'll be keeping each freebie up on CycleTo for a longer period of time, to give more people a shot at winning free stuff.

First up...one of the new WCS Alloy Curve Bars from Ritchey Design. You can see all the details, and sign-up for this bigger, better freebie, here.

Ina-Yoko on Merco - "I Was Quite Suffering"

OK, pop quiz...which pro cyclist won the most races last year? Cavendish? Contador Cadel?

Nope.

The pro with the most wins was German champion, and HTC-Columbia star Ina-Yoko Teutenberg. She won an astounding 24 races in 2009.

Ina opened her 2010 season with back-to-back victories at California's Merco Cycling Classic this past weekend, wining the downtown Merced Criterium on Saturday and the Foothills road race on Sunday.

She opened up a gap on the field after the first of three laps in the road race and held that gap for nearly 30km, but it all came down to a final sprint. Teutenberg out-kicked Peanut Butter and Company's Shelley Evans to the line, with Kelly Benjamin of the Colavita-Baci team in third.

We caught up with Ina after her road race triumph. She talks about winning in America, defending in Flanders, and assesses her overall early-season fitness, in this CycleTo video.

This Week's Freebie - Signed George Hincapie Photo

We have another one-of-a-kind freebie for you this week.

At the recent BMC training camp in SoCal, we photographed US road champ George Hincapie while he was out on a ride in his full-on championship kit. With a bit of help from BMC's US press officer Sean Weide, we were able to get one of our photos printed before the boys broke camp...and George personally signed it for us, to give away to one lucky CycleTo-er this week.

For all the details, and to sign-up for this week's CycleTo freebie, go here.

Happy Anniversary, CycleTo! It's Time for an Upgrade

This week marks the second anniversary of the launch of CycleTo, and we're doing some work to upgrade the technology behind the site.

Over the next few days, we'll be upgrading our servers and databases. When we're finished, you'll see all the same great content that you expect on CycleTo, and things will be working much more efficiently on the back-end.

You may experience short outages while we're migrating and upgrading, but don't worry...the interruptions will be temporary, and you should be able to access all the stories, photos and videos ASAP.

Thanks for hangin' with us.