MIVA committee members have put together a great schedule for the 2012 season. There is the regular time trial series on Nanaimo River Road plus a couple of weekend 15km events on the Duke Point Highway (hopefully, the ferry terminal repairs will take until April). Last year's criterium series has been modified to bi-weekly crits.  alternating with road races on a challenging 5.5km circuit near Extension.

Last year's BCMCA stage race is being replaced by a downtown Nanaimo Fathers' Day open criterium which will be on the Cycling BC schedule. In addition, MIVA will be hosting two of the Island Cup series events.

Another exciting activity is the start of the club's Youth Development programme where road safety and introduction to racing workshops will be run in local schools. The club is seeking a Community Gaming Grant to aid in delivery of these sessions.

In the Fall, the club will run a series of mid week cyclo-cross events and clinics at Diver Lake and will also organise one of the Cross on The Rock races at Beban Park in November. This may be the Island Championship.

Alejandro Valverde showed his class in today's fifth stage of the Tour Down Under by winning the king of the mountains and the stage as well. Here is the race report by Peter Walsh and here is video of the finish with Phil Liggett's commentary .

Tomorrow, the race heads for the hills so Friday's fourth stage was the last chance for Andre Greipel to put himself one nearer to the record number of stage wins in this Australian classic and he blew it. The sprint for the line, here, was won by Oscar Friere and Greipel also lost the race leader's jersey to Martin Kohler of BMC. Stage wrap up by Peter Walsh here.

MIVA trainer session is on tonight at Pleasant Valley Elementary School. Come and grind to the Sufferfest Revolver session.  

Most of the cycling media sites are slow on this so here is Phil Liggett's summing-up of stage three. For those who are just interested in the leader, Andre Greipel is still firmly in command, having given the boot to the other sprinters again.