We are giving the World’s Premiere Bike Technician, Ed Nasjleti (also known as Taco Ed), a few minutes a month on roadiaries.com to preach on topics that we assign. Ed’s knowledge is vast, and while we will enjoy his insights on everything bikes, we occasionally want to go off-track and ask him his opinion on subjects as varied as winter car tires, or how to buy Italian shoes, or the best way to get upgraded to first class. We hope you enjoy as much as we do hearing all …

ROAD Magazine’s Neil Browne found out at the Tour of Missouri how Kelly Benefit Strategies/Medifast figures out their race-day strategy: the Magic 8 Ball. I guess that’s how they do it when they’re not running Quebec Riot 101.

Agritubel’s Geoffroy Lequatre has won the 2008 Tour of Britain. The young French star took the race narrowly from Steve Cummings (Barloworld) after defending excellently with his Agritubel team for the final few stages.

Final General classification

1 Geoffroy Lequatre (Fra) Agritubel 27.21.49
2 Steve Cummings (GBr) Barloworld 0.05
3 Ian Stannard (GBr) Great Britain 0.14
4 Daniel Martin (Irl) Team Garmin-Chipotle-presnted by H30 0.15
5 Gabriele Bosisio (Ita) LPR Brakes - Ballan 0.16

Geoffroy completed the Tour de France this year in great style and we managed to catch up with him there for a chat.

Tom Zirbel (Bissell) is one of our favorite riders in the peloton and as a SRAM –sponsored rider, we could not ask for more. Tom lays it out there and gives 100% every time in every race. In fact at the final stage of the ToC I think we all witnessed one of the greatest solo efforts in some pretty miserable conditions, regardless if he was caught.

But we received this recent photo of Tom, a strapping and handsome Iowan, and we noticed the mustache. We came up with some one-liners expressing our thoughts on the stache, …

Despite all the chatter about a certain someone coming out of retirement, Astana has plenty of bike racing to talk about at the Vuelta. In particular, Saturday’s stage finish at Alto de l’Angliru. Cyclingnews has a nice article about the history of the climb, which can best be described as “ridiculous.”

Euskaltel’s Egoi Martinez is your current GC leader but he’s not expected to figure into the picture for much longer. So that puts Astana clearly in the driver’s seat, with Levi Leipheimer sitting second on GC (11″ behind Martinez) and …

Justin Spinelli is a well established rider in his second year with the Kelly Benefit Strategies/Medifast program. But getting to where he is today has been a really different journey for Justin than for the typical domestic pro.

Back in the day, he was one of the top U23 riders in the country and earned a spot as a stagiaire on the Mercury team, then the biggest American team other than US Postal, for the end of the 1999 season. Then the call came from Farm Frites, …

Alberto Contador threw it down hard in the Vuelta today and no one could respond. Would the Tour have gone the same? We’ll never know, but he definitely looked like the best rider in the bike race today.

Oh yeah, Levi took back the leader’s jersey. These guys are really, really good.

Photos by Graham Watson

Levi Leipheimer notched a win the Vuelta’s first time trial on Wednesday, although Astana didn’t seem too concerned about defending his overall lead on Thursday. They’ve got bigger plans for the next couple weeks… Anyways, here’s what Levi told us about his TT equipment and technique when we spoke with him in July.

Kelly Benefit Strategies/Medifast made their first trip over to France in August, spending a couple weeks to race in Kreiz Breizh Elites and Le Tour de Pyrenees. Andy Bajadali is the team’s best climber and he finished second overall and won the Green Jersey in the four-stage race that went over some legendary climbs like the Col d’Aspin. Here’s Andy’s take on the trip and what it means for the team’s future.

Andy on the podium in Zaragoza, Spain