Another day in the great town of Lucca, and even a better day because I managed to keep both wheels on the ground and Alison was off the front of the race for almost the whole race winning the most aggressive rider!!! She attacked after the first sprint and was solo for a major part, being most of, the race. Very impressive for sure…

Alison is going to send me a picture so I can put it up…

For now, let see… well I have more buddies to hang out with so I am excited about that. Some of the TTers are finito so they can get ready to kick some major butt at Worlds…

Dang, hold on I have to kill this mosquitoe flying around me… sorry any mosquitoe lovers.

okay so as I was saying I have more buddies to hang out with… Amber and Alison are done. And Katheryn is here too. We are watching the end of the Vuelta… They had some super climbs today… 17% at times… wow, and it is raining out so they have to make sure they don’t slip back down the hill… no really you should see the rear wheels slipping. That would suck to have to do it twice…

Sweet I just got pictures…

Alison is in the most aggressive jersey…

here are a couple

one of her and one of everyone (being the others who also get a jersey)…

Cool, I got a few pictures up…

Well, the others (Lauren, Mara, and Brooke) are off racing right now and will be home in a bit… hopefully they are kicking some major butt. For more detailed race results you could visit Brooke’s site… it is www.brookecycling.com or Alison’s site too… it is alipowers.blogspot.coms (yep, no www.)

Geeze… I just wrote about this and that and right when I was all done it(being my master piece) disappeared. I am pretty sure everything was spelled correctly on it too… but I can’t make the same promises for this one…

So what I was saying was that you (in this case me) have to be very careful when taking a hand off your bars over here across the salty seas of the Atlantic. Oh yes this is in fact true… I was just planning on going out with Kristin and Katheryn for a nice ride when all of a sudden a women (not man eating for obvious reasons) eating pot hole grab my front wheel and made me fly over my handle bars…

Yep this is in fact true. I was about to explain and demonstrate how my tank top was fitting… yes, I had a tank top on… and wam bam then next thing I know I am on the ground and I didn’t even get to tell my story. I am pretty sure I hit the only pot hole in a radius of 179km or miles for that matter here in Lucca and managed to end up on the ground. And the real bummer is I don’t get to tan in my tank top…

And you may ask, or my not… why am I training over yonder and not racing. Well the race got confused and thought I was Katheryn (not that I don’t want to be her… I mean she is super fast and all). So after a few mix ups here and there they gave me the boot and so now was focusing on getting a nice tan for Vegas so I look nice when I win millions on the 5cent machines I plan to play…

But yeah, exactly… crap, now I have a bunch of scratches all over my shoulder and elbow. Not to mention my inner thigh is killing me…

Oh well, I must move forward and still win millions.

Now, I wish I could put up pictures, but Kat took our computer home with her. Just kidding, it really isn’t both of ours, but I bet she misses sharing it with me. Thank goodness people are still getting messages everyday so I can do the computer rotations.

Well, now I have to find something cool to do until they (being Lauren, Mara, Brooke, Amber, and Alison) get back from climbing two gigantic mountains or they (being Katheryn and Kristin) get back from their training ride…
Have a good day doing whatever you like doing…

:)Chrissy

ps… so the moral of the story is… don’t try to ride over pot holes that you don’t see coming with only one hand on the bars, unless you are good at it

After weaving in and out of traffic down the coast of Italy we (being Katharine, Brooke, Allison, Katheryn, and me) are back in Lucca where Lauren, Kristin and newly arrived Mara are. So far we have just been swatting each other out on the front porch… But I have to say… Thank goodness we got paddles in Holland at the Ladies Tour because my hand is starting to get sore…
Oh yes, why are we swatting at each other… the mosquitoes have decide to come hang out. Now I like most people and things, but I can’t say I like anything that bits.

But way more exciting news is the fact that Katharine Carroll was off the front for pretty much the whole race yesterday and won!!!! It was awesome!! And our other Katheryn Curi moved into 3rd place overall…. super awesome!!!

Next up Brooke and I will begin the Grand Tour of 3 tours, which means 3 weeks of stage races here over the salty seas of the Atlantic. Also racing Toscona is Mara, Lauren, Katheryn, Amber, and Allison. We begin with a 5km or so TTT, oh yes a team time trial, which means with these girls we will be traveling at mock speeds. So today I am going to look for some rope so I can attach myself to one of these girls…

This was now two days or so ago and it is almost time to start the TTT of 5km and the sun has come out so I am super excited because I really didn’t want to at mock speeds slipping and sliding around my teammates…

I just found out we have sweet helmet numbers… I love those things because when they start flapping it sounds like I am flying… and they just look so cool.

Alright, I was going to put up pictures but my ( I mean everyones that I am using) computer wouldn’t let me load anything right now…

So hopefully I will be able to update again, but for now I have to get ready and actually the mosquitoes are eating me alive!!

:)Chrissy

Thank goodness Kat is letting me use our computer, which is really hers… I do computer jump, but find myself jumping on this one most. Not literally because she would kill me if I broke it.

Anyways, we (being the computer and I) have so much other things to talk about like the fact that Brooke won a stage here in France not yesterday, but the day before, Katharine is killing the sprint competition everyday, and Katheryn had a fantastic race yesterday and is in 4th place overall.

You may be wondering what I am doing, and even if not, well the views are awsome… no just kidding. But the most of the wheels and uniforms are sweet… And after the races we get to see the amazing views. This is mainly because Tom Tom usually leads us home the shortest way, which is usually through the winding mountains which are amazing…

And home are these campers which sound like they may in fact blow over if it were to get any windier or more windy, which ever it is. It (being here) is like we are camping, but without the smores and mosquitoes.

Next up is either home or Toscona depending on if I feel better and then off to Vegas to wine and dine in between the five cent machine winning my millions a bit by bit…

Brooke and Kat, who are my roommates, really thought I should take a picture of myself this morning… sure I would get a modeling contract. So I decided to go a head and go for it.

Alright time for me to drink my bowl of coffee. The cups are way to small for the amount of coffee one needs after spending all morning fixing my hair…

Let see if I can find a picture of Kat on her computer in her sweet jersey…

No, no, no we are bike racing… not horse back riding. Although that does sound kinda fun…

K, time to go

:)Chrissy

The frog is jumping a little extra high today… why? Well well well, because Kristin Armstrong won the Tour of Holland!! Yep, yep it was awesome. She smoked the TT yesterday after a week of weaving in and out of road funiture, squeezing onto narrow roads, getting rained on, rounding round-abouts, and pedaling faster then anyone else.

It was an exciting race that never had a dull moment… right when you think you may be able to grab your water bottle for a sip of water the race was off off and away. Now I am not talking about a true gulp, I really mean a sip… there was just no time for even a goo squeeze. In fact most days when I tried to take a goo squeeze it just ended up on my hands and then my bars.

So we (being Kristin, Katharine, Meredith, Lauren, Brooke, and myself) left the land of Holland and now are either in France for Ardeche (Brooke, Katharine, and me being joined by Katheryn and Alison) or in Italy (Lauren and Kristin) or going home (Meredith). Geeze we are just all over the map, literally.

I am happy to announce that we have left what seems to be a bit of cold weather for a bit of warmer weather. But, now I have just jinked the week, but today was nice.

I guess I better go let my roommate Kat back into the room. I had to lock her out of it so I could use her computer and she keeps banging on it. I just keep telling her I am in the bathroom and come back in a bit. No just kidding, really though lucky for me most days everyone gets a message so when we have internet I rotate from computer to computer as messages are given.

For real though, I am off to find some more sweet one piece safari outfits…

Cheers,

:)Chrissy