Italy

Hey people,

Just give you a quick rap on the race in Japan.

So the race in Sendai Bay, Japan went pretty good for me with me coming out of the water in second and a break on the bike of about 16 guys formed. Until a crash on the bike, an Australian team mate crashed and broke his collarbone...not good. So the front bike group was now 7 of us and we went into T2 with about a 2min lead over the next chase pack. Had a decent run (still room to improve) and finished in 6th place, gaining valuable points for the ranking system. Also, just finished outside the money, which paid to 5th.


Now I'm just chilling in the hotel room in Verase, Italy before we go for a run in about an hour.


Went swimming this morning at the pool (4km), which is about 10min by car if no traffic. Trickett, Sullivan, Lauterstein and Abode (NSWIS swimmers) were swimming the same time and are staying about 5min from us. We have a recovery session this afternoon, which is at their hotel. The AIS has a couple of liaison officers that stay over here all year that are in contact with us most days. They organise the physio and massage therapist to come to our hotel everyday. We alternate physio and massage each day which is super good for recovery also.

The hotel we are staying in is plush! The owner of the hotel has three cars in the car park… a yellow Lamborghini, black Ferrari and a dark green Bentley. They are awesome, shiny and so cool. We are trying to get him to take us for a spin in them. The meals at the hotel are excellent…three-course meals lunch and dinner and its top quality food! And the manager of the hotel loves us…most days he sits with us and has a laugh during the meals.

I am absolutely loving the tour being on here live during the day…its normally on about 2pm….they love the late mornings and long nights. They have this section on Eurosport channel called ‘planet armstrong’ which is very cool. Everything and anything about him. They just follow him. There is so much coverage on the race its not funny…I knew it would be massive but not this big.

Jono Hall met with this local triathlon coach and he has been showing us different places to ride which is pretty crazy…yesterday we went for a 60km ride (a 5pm start coz its doesn’t get dark until like 10pm) and when we were close to our hotel is was peak hour and we were dodging all these cars…if we did that in Australia we would get that much abuse its not funny. But its good fun! ☺

Fabio (local tri coach) took us to a bike crit race on Tuesday night (start 7pm) that had about 40 guys start on a 1.5-2km circuit which was very cool. Two guys broke away with about 12 laps to go. The euro’s absolutely love cycling…this was a local race and there was heaps of people watching. All of the boys including me wanted to get a start but Jono wouldn’t let us but it was good to watch.

Anyway got to get ready but ill try and put some photos up for use to see.

Cheers,
SB