Part 1: I have a lot of updating to do, here is a start:
(Ride around Lucca)
Warning, random Italy photos posted throughout.
I am now at that point where there is so much to talk about, I don't really have anything to say. It is much like those times when you get on the phone with someone whom you have not talked to in a few years, months, weeks, and they ask you "Whats new?" and your response is: "Oh, nothing....." because you do not want to spend the next 2 hrs recapping everything.
That is what we call "laziness", my friends.
(This is a mountain we climbed/raced up on Stage 4 (above), it was nicknamed the Queen Bee-itch (sorry for the profanity))
(Its July, and there is still snow on this mountain, in Southern Italy)
I am going to blame it on the fact that I only had one evening of internet access during the Giro and no internet access during the Tour of Bretagne. There is A LOT to talk about, but delving into the colossal task of summarzing 15 stages which included racing all over Italy and then traveling from Italy to the most Northwest corner of France to race Bretagne.....well do you really want to read a novel?
(View from one of the hotel rooms - we had transfers every day at the Giro)
The Giro was the BEST. Not exactly courses that suited my strenghts, but it was the highest level of racing, and I loved it. I had the best teammates and team USA staff (director, soigneur, mechanic, logistics) were all incredible. We traveled all over gorgeous Italy and had a lot of laughs along the way. I was impressed with how well Team USA came together as a team; the seven of us had never ridden as a team before, but each day things seemed to fall more and more into place.
(A transfer)
Then I hopped an overnight train (travelled for 20 hrs), sat at a train station for another 6 hours, spun with Devon (new arrival from the US to be my teammate for Tour of Bretagne and Tour of Limousin), and began the next stage race with ASPTT Dijon
Tour of Bretagne: not uber aggressive racing, and coming off the Giro, I had to be conservative. The races weren't insane enough to whittle down the field, and I wasn't comfortable with the way some of the women handled their bikes/themselves, which left me hesitant for sprint finishes....and therefore there were really no sprint finishes (for me - always getting boxed in or too far back). Overall, for me, Bretagne was frustrating. I felt I had the legs, I just wasn't willing to take the risk; there is a safe sprint, and then there is a sprint where you know someone is going to hit the deck. The latter I avoid. The latter seemed to dominate Bretagne.
I am thankful to have Devon here as a teammate, for sanity's sake. She got the Queen of the Mountain jersey, so she wore polka dots every day. Yay Devon!
Now we are in some small tourist town, sitting at a pub for hours on end (the only place in the area that has wi-fi), getting our internet fix before our next no-"weeefeeeee"-week.
