Got a question for America's most decorated active stage racer? Levi Leipheimer will be appearing on a live webstream and taking your questions via Twitter! The event is being organized by CLIF Bar, and people whose questions are taken can get a free signed Levi poster! [No, really.] Here are the details:

When: 1:30pm Pacific, Today. a/k/a 4:30 Eastern or 10:30pm CEST for our Euro friends

Watch the stream: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/clif-bar-live-webcasts

Submit a question: Use an existing UStream profile or create one. Or, sign on to Twitter and send questions with the hashtag: #AskTeamCLIFBar

Got it? I can't make it, so you guys make it happen. Don't let him off the stream before he can tell us exactly where he plans to attack at the Tour!

Wednesday 9th May

Verona-Verona 33.2km Team Time Trial

ENTRY DEADLINE 15:25 CET. To be fair to everyone, I think we'll start being strict about the entry deadines from Stage 4 onwards. But I'll try to get up the next stage's post about an hour before the end of the previous stage. And if you'll be incommunicado for a few days, remember that you can always post your picks well ahead of time anywhere that I'll see them, I'll keep a note of them for you.

Steve's stage preview at Steephill:

This year's team time trial features flat urban roads at the start and finish in downtown Verona while the central part has a few short technical uphill climbs and descents through vineyards. The course starts with several bends before crossing the Adige river followed by 8 km of straight, fast roads with a bunch of roundabouts to make things interesting. After the rolling vineyard section in the northwest part of town, the course loops back into the city along wide and straight roads up to the finish on Piazza Bra. The 2010 Giro d'Italia also had a 32 km TTT on stage 4 after returning from the Netherlands. Liquigas won it while the last place team lost almost three minutes so this stage could break some GC dreams. Judging by the opening individual time-trial, Garmin-Barracuda will be the team to beat. Orica-GreenEdge, Sky and BMC also have a good shot at winning this stage. It's hard to pass byLiquigas, whom often do well at Giro d'Italia TTTs, but I don't see them finishing higher than fourth this year.

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Today was the third running of I Muri Fermani, the elite women's race promoted by Marina Romoli's father and (since her accident) raced in her honour. News seems to have been a bit thinner on the ground this year. There was no live video, and a lot fewer press releases. The best coverage seems to have come from Italian website amolabici.tv who filmed the video below at Saturday's team presentation wrote this report too, then gave a live web commentarywhich will give some idea of how the race developed.

The final result: Alena Amaliusik and Noemi Cantele got away on the final climb, then Amaliusik dropped Cantele and won solo by some 40 seconds. The battle for third came down to a bunch sprint which was won by Rossella Ratto (in perhaps her first race for her trade team Verinlegno - Fabiani). I hope that more video will turn up later this week.

Monday 7th May. Horsens-Horsens 190km.

Entry deadline 11:35 CET. I may extend the deadline into the race again, depending on circumstances. But I'll make sure that nobody who picks on time is disadvantaged.

Race organisers chose to ignore the daunting snow-capped peaks of the Danish highlands, so it's a flat one again.

Steve's preview at Steephill says:

The stage consists of three circuits crossing the eastern part of the Jutland around Horsens, an old Danish city on a fjord surrounded by moraine, hills and valleys formed by the last ice age. The first two circuits, each approximately 45 km and 100 km in distance, will be covered only once, while the third one, 14.6 km long, will be repeated three times. The Intermediate Sprint (Hovedgård – km 90.6) and the GPM (cat 4, 159 m – km 103.8) are in the neighborhood of Denmark’s highest point (Ejer Bavnehøj) are located on the second circuit. The last 45 km take place on a fast urban circuit in Horsens. The last 5 km are almost straight with the last bend well before (2 km) the finish.

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Sunday 6th May. Herning-Herning, 206km.

Entry deadline 12:25pm CET EDIT: I'm off to bed, and several people haven't posted their entries yet. For stage 2 only, we'll be generous and stay open for entries after the stage start, until anything major happens that I think affects the result significantly. After a break goes, you'll probably still be free to chose 3 guys not in the break. But if any major sprinter crashes out, no more entries. In fairness to everyone else, anyone who's already posted can make a change too any time until I close it. We'll be strict on the deadline from Stage 3 on.

YOU CAN STILL ENTER, EVEN IF YOU MISSED THE FIRST STAGE.

SMALL RULE CHANGE: Since we have more players than I anticipated, from Stage 2 onward I'm increasing the bonus points slightly to 1st=24, 2nd=12, 3rd=6

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PhilH doesn't seem to be about these days, and holmovka and pablo have kindly offered some prizes for a stage predictor game. (I'm sure that they will be fun prizes, but of modest monetary value STOP PRESS: Giro hat autographed by Sergey Lagutin! - as always at PdC, this kind of thing is primarily for the honor and glory.) I'm planning to watch every stage, so I'm volunteering to look after the game if we have enough people who want to play - I guess it's worthwhile if we have at least 25 or so. Update: we're well on the way to having enough players, so the game is definitely going ahead. If pablo wants that hat, he's going to have to earn it.

If you want to play, put a reply on here to let us know. Below the jump, you'll see that I've tweaked the rules a little bit so that we're not all just picking the favorites... but it's the same basic idea - pick three for each stage.

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I love mountains! And the 2012 Giro has plenty.

• In total, there will be twenty "Category 1" and "Category 2" climbs in yet another mountainous Giro.
• There will be six mid-mountain stages (6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 16), and five high-mountain stages (stages 14, 15, 17,19, 20).

Passo dello Stelvio - Bormio side

After the jump let's take an numerical approach to rank the top 20 Giro climbs in terms of difficulty.

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ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the dick lane velodrome. as you can probably tell, it's not quite as new and fancy as london's new olympic track, but it has its charm. a little creek runs through it, and the tree in the in-field is a nice touch. it was built in the mid 70s, and has seen a good bit of action over the years. it's concrete, banked at 36 degrees in the turns, a 1/5 of a mile in length and has a bit of a dip between turns 3 and 4 (more charm). why am i doing a post on it, you might ask. well, i'll let you know after the jump.

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Nice video from North American team Colavita-ESPNw - with some excellent on-bike footage that just makes me itch to go for a ride!

Starring Canadians Joanie Caron, Leah Guloien & Moriah MacGregor and Mary Zider & Jamie Dinkins Bookwalter from the USA and Kathryn Bertine (St Kitts & Nevis)

Bertine writes for ESPNw, and has a fantastic series on her quest to get to the Olympic Games for St Kitts & Nevis, which gives a lot of insight into what it's like to be a cyclist in the women's peloton - here's her profile of the team, I recommend it!

Don't worry Phil H. (if you're around), this does not in any way step on your toes.

Chris already covered a little of what I'd mean to write here, but there's plenty more for me to say. This is something I have actually done each year for the Giro since 2009 - confidence picks, for the entire race, based on the initial start list.

Confidence picks are my own twist on a gambling concept called confidence points. In confidence points, you take a series of consecutive or concurrent (but not directly connected) events and assign points to each one based on how 'confident' you are in the outcome. If there are ten events, one will be worth 10 confidence points, one will be worth 9 points, and so on. You earn the points if your pick is correct, and if it's incorrect, you don't. Whoever has the most points wins. The classic example, as explained in the link, is football, as many football games are usually played on one day, but another common example is fighting events, boxing and MMA and such.

For my twist, I will take the 21 stages and four jersey awards at the Giro d'Italia and make 5 picks for each one, to reflect varying confidences. My 5 point pick is my favorite for the day, and my 1 point pick is my longshot. Only if one of my five picks is the winner do I score any points at all. With 21 stages and four jersey awards, that's 125 possible points. My goal will be to score at least half.

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