ESPN.com

• This wheel's on fire
  Alberto Contador won the Tour de France last week, riding the 2,140 miles in 85 hours and 48 minutes, an average of nearly 25 miles per hour up towering mountains and across wind-swept fields and shores.
  
  He used two wheels. The slacker.
  
  If you want an impressive cyclist, check out Joe Myers [a scheduler in Western Washington University's Facilities Management] on this video of a ride up Washington's Mount Baker (you can see him at the 2:07 and 5:53 points). Myers rode this weekend's annual Cougar Mountain Climb for Cancer in 18 minutes, 42 seconds on a unicycle. The Cougar Mountain ride is about two miles long with an average gradient of nearly 7½ percent and some stretches as high as 16 percent. To give you some perspective, that's almost as steep as the Tour's legendary Alpe d'Huez. It's not pleasant on two wheels, let alone one.

The Bellingham Herald

• WWU scientists study harmful algal blooms in Puget Sound
  Under a microscope, Heterosigma akashiwo looks like a potato or a cornflake. To the naked eye, sea lettuce is a big, green sheet of seaweed. In most cases, these different algae are food for the ocean's vegetarians.
  
  But every few years during summer and early fall they multiply in massive numbers until they harm the marine ecosystem, kill fish or die off themselves and wash onto Puget Sound beaches, where they reek like rotting seafood.
  
  Two scientists - Suzanne Strom and Kathy Van Alstyne - at Western Washington University's Shannon Point Marine Center in Anacortes are studying these harmful algal blooms.