May 14
I started pretty strong but not quite on the front lines. I find that its not too hard to make my way to the front if there is not an uphill start. Today’s race started with a 900foot drop. I got up to about 65km/hour then we slowed down and made our way to the one huge hill of the race. There were a few crashes on the way rite in front of me, but luckily I wasn’t caught in them. About 50 km into the race I almost crashed though, some guy veered into my front wheel and ruined his bike but I was ok, I almost flew off the road, but corrected myself… He was pissed and yelled at me, but I laughed at him and rode away. Italians can be mouthy, well they usually always are. I used to get yelled at, but now I just yell back in English and tell them off and they shut rite up. I don’t think they are used to being yelled back at. I didn’t get dropped by the lead group till about 90 km. I just couldn’t match them on the huge climb and all those little guys just flew up it. I ended up with a group of 13 people. I beat five of them and finished in 20th place. There were a lot of pro’s in this race and even an American pro team from Pennsylvania. I finished in 4 hours and 50 minutes. Ten minutes under my goal of 5 hours. The pasta party was good too. They had proscuito and Cheese, my favorite food here in Italy. We had three plates each. Then the ragu pasta and bread and Dolce which is sweets. We have become friends with the guy that does the times on the computer and his girlfriend. They are cool and don’t really care about how the race goes, they are more concerned with how cool the city is and the sites.