Cyclists prepare for Tour de Palm Springs
It’s the Coachella Valley’s biggest biking event as the Tour de Palm Springs rolls into town Friday and Saturday.
Bike chains will be in motion in the streets of Palm Springs Saturday with cyclists rolling in from across the country.
“I’m excited. I’ve training in my basement at home. We got a lot of snow on the ground back east,” Kevin Gabreski, a cyclist from Pennsylvania, said.
He’s one of thousands of cyclists signed up for the Tour de Palm Springs taking on a formidable challenge, a 102 mile bike ride.
“The pain, sitting on your seat for hours on end and we’ll get through it, probably get off and take some breaks,” Gabreski said.
{“url”:”https://twitter.com/JeremyChenKESQ/status/1093506719148236802″,”author_name”:”Jeremy Chen”,”author_url”:”https://twitter.com/JeremyChenKESQ”,”html”:”&#lt;blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”&#gt;&#lt;p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”&#gt;We’re at Clark’s Nutrition doing previews of the Tour de Palm Springs bike ride. We’ll be talking nutrition coming up at 6 am. &#lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/KESQ?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”&#gt;@KESQ&#lt;/a&#gt; &#lt;a href=”https://t.co/YT6PPYUxAm”&#gt;pic.twitter.com/YT6PPYUxAm&#lt;/a&#gt;&#lt;/p&#gt;– Jeremy Chen (@JeremyChenKESQ) &#lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/JeremyChenKESQ/status/1093506719148236802?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”&#gt;February 7, 2019&#lt;/a&#gt;&#lt;/blockquote&#gt;n&#lt;script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″&#gt;&#lt;/script&#gt;n”,”width”:550,”height”:null,”type”:”rich”,”cache_age”:”3153600000″,”provider_name”:”Twitter”,”provider_url”:”https://twitter.com”,”version”:”1.0″}
Tires and brakes should be checked andproper nutrition and hydration is essential for such long rides.
“If you don’t have enough proteins coming in you’re going to be sore for a little bit longer than you probably should be,” Starkie Sowers, director of education at Clark’s Nutrition, said.
Tour de Palm Springs is also helping local charities, raising more than $3 million over the past 20 years.
“It gives us a jolt and it also gives us exposure being at the program on Friday and Saturday and just letting people, makes them more aware,” Jim Bruner, vice president on the board of Childhelp, said.
Gabreski says he’s ready to go and has safety on his mind by asking drivers to be mindful.
“Slow down and be careful because we have as much right on the road as cars do,” he said.
