Cyclingnews diarist Amber Rais of Team Tibco has updated her logs after a full racing season which...
A little out of breath after winning stage 6 at the Cascade Cycling Classic (Image credit: Kurt Jambretz)
Cyclingnews diarist Amber Rais of Team Tibco has updated her logs after a full racing season which finally ended in Tuscany rather than Missouri, USA. The Giro Toscana broadened her Italian vocabulary before she headed home to Graz, Austria, to enjoy some 'Gemütlichkeit'.
Giro Toscana
My season ended with a surprise trip to Italy. According to my race calendar, I had originally been slated to finish my race season with the Tour of Missouri Women's Criterium in early September, which would have meant nearly a full month of training without racing before I could take some time off in October. I had mentally prepared myself for this eventuality when an opportunity arose to race the Giro Toscana in Italy with the National Team. Of course I jumped at the chance to get one last stage race under my legs in September, and let's be honest, it's Tuscany!
With Jim Miller directing, we were a team of six riders: Kristin Armstrong, Katheryn Curi, Brooke Miller, Carmen McNellis, Kristin McGrath and me. We ate enormous quantities of pasta and red (pomodoro) sauce, but our most impressive gastronomic achievement may have been our daily consumption of cappuccinos, which adorned our breakfast table daily as stacked porcelain towers, alabaster monuments to the remarkable consumptive prowess of Team USA (pronounced oo-sah). We also ate substantial volumes of parmesan cheese, about which we managed to be a little more discreet than we were about the cappuccinos.
