Ah recovery days. After smashing yourself for over a week, it’s nice to unwind with a cruisey ride where you have time to take in the scenery around you and even make a brew stop or two. That is what we have on the program today :) After a pretty solid few days, my body is relishing the fact today I will not be crawling back from this ride on my knees. And how exactly have I come to reach this point? Well since our last double session, we’ve ventured close to 4hrs south to do a recon of Stage 3 of the Giro Donne (also dubbed as the ‘Queen stage’) which includes 2 climbs which are close to 9km in length. The stage starts of with a flat 50km before winding through a little town up the first climb, then down a long decent with another flat section not long before we start the climb to the hill top finish up Monte Serra. It is definitely going to be a tough one but at least now I’ve seen the climbs so hopefully it will not be too much of a shock to the system as I know it’s humanly possible to haul my butt up them!



We’ve also done some more motor pacing and yesterday ventured up what is more commonly know as the ‘Basso Climb’, I’m just hoping that means I’ll now climb like him! Now just a couple of more days for our bodies to recover before we tackle the Giro Donne head on!

Off the bike, the girls and I have enjoyed yet more gelati, grocery shopping, Italian lessons, shopping excursions and pizza eating. I even managed to catch up with fellow Canberran Vicki Whitelaw and her husband Dave who are currently living about 40km from where we are! It was great to catch up with them and hear how Vicki is coping with life as a pro cyclist, plus it was nice just to see another friendly face! It sure is a small world! We originally met at what the girls call the ‘chocolate spoon café’ which was dubbed that as the hot chocolates are actually served with a chocolate spoon! However, much to my disappointment, it was closed so we had to settle for another café where I had a very respectable hazelnut smoothie, not quite a chocolate spoon but I still rated it :)



We’ve also hit up the train to do a spot of shopping Varese before getting stuck in a thunderstorm in hail whilst having yet another mouth watering gigantor pizza from della Motta. Hmmm. I’ve finally mastered the food ordering process and can now add/change ingredients at my discretion; nothing is going to stop me now!! Who knows what random concoctions I’ll come up with next! We also had fun talking to one of the waiters who when we proceeded to give him a tip, kindly declined it in what we thought was a very polite manner before adding ‘I only take notes’, all in good spirits though. After having a bit of a laugh over that, we decided it would be funny to leave him a $5 Aussie note which he took as a souvenir, little did he know that it was well below the value of the 15 euro tip that we’d originally left for him!


Today I’m going out the lunch with some of the girls to Bar Cavour, home of my very first Italian hot chocolate. Apparently they don’t have a menu and you simply ask for whatever ingredients you want on your Panini or salad and voila! Just for something different.

My roommate Belinda Goss has also finally arrived! It’s great to have someone else around, started to get a bit lonely! And the U23 boys have come back to the base and Marv and Laura both arrive today so the base is crawling with action!



Our nights have been filled with more high stakes UNO bliss and we have decided that we are going to hold the inaugural UNO World Championships! Winner takes all. We’ve also discovered one of the dangers of owning a credit card = online shopping. Last night, the girls and I spent hours scavenging through the Victoria’s Secret website and we ended up with an order bordering on $400 worth of swimmers and dresses! You could hardly blame us, with a one day only sale of 20-60% it was an offer we simply couldn’t refuse!! So hopefully when we get back form the Giro, we’ll have a nice little package waiting for us on the doorstep . It was also an excellent team bonding exercise, with girls each giving their 2 cents worth, phrases such as ‘you’d look so hot in that’ and ‘nah, you have to be a skinny bitch to pull that off’ were thrown around and peer pressure was used heavily on the indecisive. I ended up with a bikini and a dress, chosen for me with the help of the team of personal shoppers :P can’t wait until they arrive!

Yesterday was also our last Italian lesson until we get back from the Giro. Ariane treated us those who had done their homework to a lovely homemade cheese cake. We’ve learnt a lot in our lessons and I now feel confident that I have been provided with enough material to get by in Italy  it was also another great team bonding experience, with the girls each discussing how we could cure the ‘drought’ that has plagued a few of us over the last few months :P

We’ve also are starting to get organised for the Giro which starts this Friday with the 2.5km prologue. I didn’t actually realise just how fortunate I was to be apart of the Australian team. I wouldn’t be joking when I said all you had to do was ride your bike. At a brief meeting we had yesterday, we were told that all meals/snack food/biddons was taken care of, that our washing would be done every night for us, we’d get massages at least every 2nd day and all of the recovery stuff and bike equipment taken care of. We sure are spoilt!! I feel a bit lazy actually…

Well I think that is all that has been happening over the last couple of days..I’ll try and give another quick entry before we head off for the Giro as who knows when we’ll have internet!

Until then, take care and best of luck to all those riding the Canberra Tour!
Ciao Ciao


Miffy xx