Crashing is never fun!!

This last trip had it's ups and downs, but most of the trip was good. I got through the racing and felt like I actually race, didn't just hang on for dear life. I was able to help my team and be a part of the race and that was really fun! The last race was going really good, legs didn't feel too bad and I was having good positioning for most of the day. And all of a sudden I found myself on the ground, bike on top of me, not moving. WTF! I have to admit that the crash scared me more than it hurt me. I landed on my left side and thought for sure I had broke my collar bone again. I got up handed my bike to our mechanic Andrew and ran to the car. Lucky, I am fine, no broken bones, just some soreness in my back and neck and some really good bruises and road rash! Wow, I was lucky and I am really glad my collar bone held up this time!

I guess it wouldn't be bike racing if there weren't crashes. I was really lucky through out the four races. I avoided probably about 10 crashes all together, but what can you do when you are taken out from behind.

We (Lauren, Alison and I) are back in Lucca recovering and nursing our wounds. Kat Carroll, Christine Thorburn, and Katheryn Curi Mattis will be joining us on Thursday.

Me and this little girl at the presentation, she was so cute and had on wooden clogs.

The girls being silly.

When you see lots of these, you know the race will be windy!

Belgium

We have been in Belgium for five days now and it has rained 4 of the days. We got really lucky though, race day it was supposed to be one of the worst storms in the century and we lucked out - no rain, snow, but just a little wind. Although we had pretty nice weather the cobbles were still wet and some even muddy from the storm the night before. There were so many crashes and because of my crappy positioning most of the day I was behind all of them. One point I had to run up the cobble section cyclocross style and I have to say calves are very sore today (due to the running). It was definitely an epic day for me and one of the hardest races I have ever done and I am very pleased that I finished Flanders. Not bad for my first time, but I hope next time I race cobbles I do a better job! Sorry no race pictures, but I do have some picture from our training ride.

Out my hotel window, architecture much different from Italy. Pretty in it's own way, but if I had a choice I would pick Italy to live/train any day.

Most of these areas are pretty flat, as you can see my the picture, no mountains in the back ground to be seen. Yesterday there were hill, but they were short and steep. This was a break in the clouds, it seems like the weather is constantly changing. One minute the sun is out and the next it is cloudy, gray, and raining.

See how everything is so green...it's because of all the RAIN!!!

P.S. I did hear someone yell "go Carmen" on the Muur, who could that have been? If anyone knows please tell me.

Fun riding to the Mediterranean

Today was beautiful! We rode to the Mediterranean, had a espresso and then road back. It was a fabulous ride (are you tired of me saying how gorgeous it is here?) Well it is and I am still amazed by it!

Riding along the cost in Viareggio.

Brooke got in last night and will be with us for a couple of weeks.

Big ring (aka Emily), I had to sprint just to catch her up this hill and you guessed it she was in her big ring!

The girls and Jim(he just like one of the girls) at the watering hole. There is one in each town!

Lame Picture taker

I have been really bad about having my camera with me to take pictures and then the one time I brought it, I ran out of batteries! But I did get a few shots before it ran out. I went to the store today and bought more, but I am soon going to run out of money because the Euro to the Dollar has gotten so bad.

This is our apartments at the SRM villa, I would show you the pool but it is under construction.

This is our van (don't worry we don't ride in this one), our bikes do.
View from the race start, you can see all the way to the ocean. Saturdays race start was even more beautiful.

We have lemon trees right outside our door. It's wonderful you can just go pick fresh lemons and they are wonderful!

More Pictures to come. We will be in Lucca this week and then leave on Thursday for Belgium for 2 weeks. Hopefully I will have a lot to report from that trip.

Tired - not much to say

I wish I could say I am tired from racing and training so hard, but I am tired from not being able to sleep. I need to sleep!!!

The WC was really fun, I felt really good and was able to help my team! Luckily the not being able to sleep started only a few nights before the race so I was still rested and ready to race.

Hopefully I will be a little better about taking pictures, it is absolutely beautiful here and need to share it with all of you. I will post more pictures in a couple of days.

LUCCA!!!

Wow, Lucca Italy is beautiful. After a rough trip to Europe (getting motion sick and throwing up in the air plane and then several times after that) I am very happy to be here. The apartments we are staying in are awesome, let me tell you top of the line!

The weather is not great, it has been cloudy and this after noon it started raining and hasn't stopped. Luckily we got in a ride this morning. We went to see the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It was really cool. The ride to Pisa was beautiful, had small little roads, and very old houses. I loved it. I don't know how some cars fit through those small roads. Impressive. Here are some pictures.

Megan, Alison, and Lauren. Cars go on this road, yes it's a road!

Lauren and I with the leaning tower of Pisa.

Off to Europe

I am going to be very surprised if any of my luggage arrives in Italy...Yeah that's right! I got up at 4:15 this morning to head to the airport. We arrived and to my surprise there was a line. This is Durango Airport, one of the smallest airports I have ever seen, they only have one terminal. Well, I walk in the airport and asked the lady in front of me "are you on the 6am flight?" She replied yes and then the check in lady said we are having problems with the computers this morning so we thank you for your patients. I really wasn't worried about making the flight since everyone in line was on the flight. (only one going out) I got up to the counter and I shit you not they are hand writing all the tickets and baggage tags. Wow I thought to myself this can't be good, how are they going to scan my bags in on 4 different flights. This is going to be a nightmare. Well, my bags got to Denver at least. I am not sure they will make the next flight, but I will keep my fingers crossed.

First Race in the US

We are in Exeter California racing the Sequoia Classic. Today was a 40km time trial and tomorrow we have a 90 minute crit. Ouch!

Today was awesome racing on our new bikes! And wow they are fast! Just look at it, wow that's a fast bike!

The scenery was gorgeous and Aarons team did a wonderful job!

Here are the top ten results:

1 Kristin Armstrong

2 Rhodes Alex

3 Felicia Gomez

4 Anne Samplonius

5 Katharine Carroll

6 Leigh Hobson

7 Mara Abbott

8 Molly Van Houweling

9 Kristin Sanders
10 Carmen McNellis

Meredith had a unfortunate mechanical and was unable to finish the race.

Hopefully tomorrow goes well!

Pictures and Stuff

Well, I am almost recovered from the hard racing and brutal travel. I think I traveled for 32 hours straight! That sucked!

I am back in the cold weather and hating it. I left 90 degree weather to come to the cold land of Durango and it's been in the 30 and 40 the past week. Well, at least the roads are clear and I can ride outside and I don't have to be on the trainer.

Feeding seagulls french fries, wow they loved them, they came by the hundreds.

Kangaroos hanging out at the golf course.

New Zealand was beautiful. This was the day of the tt and the wind was brutal! Just look at the waves and grass!

The day of the presentation some High School students performed the Haka dance. They use to do this dance before they went into battle. It's a pretty intense dance.

Another beautiful picture of New Zealand!

Almost Home

I successfully completed my first international stage race and World Cup! I had a wonderful time the past two weeks getting to know new team mates and race my bike.

Our wonderful swanee found this golf course were you could eat dinner and see kangaroo's. It was awesome, there was so many just hanging out eating the grass. I think this was a momma and a baby.

We got to New Zealand last week and it was absolutely beautiful. Unfortunately I didn't take a lot of pictures, I was really tired most of the time and the didn't have time to "site see." Luckily Alison is sharing pictures with me so between her pictures and mine I have some to share!

This is a group of school kids who presented at our pre race introduction. They danced and sang for us. They performed the Haka, which is a tribal dance performed before going into battle. The all blacks (rugby team) performs the dance before they play. It is really cool check out this website.

We had a five hour lay over in Sydney, so Chrissy, Alison, and I left the airport and walk to a little town called Wallie Creek. It was great, we found a coffee shop at lunch and relaxed. Much better than sitting in the airport for 5 hours!

I have more pictures on my camera, so I will down load them and put them on the blog when I get home. DIA has free internet, so I can pass my time by writing a blog!

Down Under

I am in Australia, racing the Geelong Tour and Geelong World Cup! It has been a blast and we head out tomorrow for New Zealand for a 5 day stage race. The racing has been great and the down times have been fun too. Here are some pictures.

Well it seems like I am not able to load any pictures. I will try again later.
sorry...

LOTS OF SNOW!!!

I finally made it home after 2 days of Airport travel and it has snowed an insane amount in Durango. I haven't seen snow like this since 1993. What a good winter to move back to Durango. Denver (that is were I moved from) has not had a lot of snow and temperatures have been in the 60's! I'm not jealous or anything!

Can you see a car?...

...45min later. Oh, there's the car!

I had to stop because my back and arms started to hurt. Maybe I am not shoveling the correct way, or maybe I have turned into a major wimp when it comes to winter and snow!

Aaron's Team Camp 2008!

So I left snowy Durango to come to rainy Santa Cruz, CA. I am not joking when I say that it has not stopped raining since we arrived to our house in Santa Cruz.

This is the last time that I saw blue sky. What a beautiful sunset, and then the clouds rolled in and that was that.


The first day we had our photo shot and we had a wonderful time playing around and playing model. Man we looked good, a bunch of hot women (not girls CP), I bet the photographers liked that! We got to ride the trainers, to cold and wet (raining non stop) to go outside. This was sad for all of us!

Meredith, Erika, Alison, and Rebecca.

Today we got to go to Specialized! It was awesome. They have such a great facility and the staff is wonderful. We (the team) joined some of the guys and Eron for the lunch time ride. It rained, and rained, and rained some more. But is was really fun and I am glad we sacrificed being out in the rain. It turned into a really fun time and didn't even complain about the rain once. Sorry didn't bring my camera to specialized or on the ride. So here is a picture of Catherine Powers and I.

No one hoards food better than a cyclist! Meredith got a apple pie from Chad (Sram Guy) and we ate some of it in the room. Don't worry, we didn't eat all of it and we, well Meredith shared it with the rest of the girls.

Hope for no rain! It's only a 70% chance of rain tomorrow, better than 90%! For more pictures go to Kristin's Blog!

Pictures, Camp #2

Well, we left sunny California to come to cold and snowy Salt Lake City. But I can't complain that much because we have had such a great experience learning about our bodies and lost of other stuff.

Here is our last ride in Cali, it was beautiful with a high of 70 plus degrees! It was such a nice change from Durango.

Andy and Viggo at the track before we got started. Andy always has his large cup of coffee. He needs it, he had some long days last week.

After Cali we ventured of to SLC to have a packed schedule visiting TOSH. Lucky this was our recovery week so we didn't need to log a bunch of hours on the bike. We haven't ridden outside since we got here, all on the trainer. I guess I better get us to it, I am coming home to very cold weather in Durango. I think the high for most days are some were in the 20's. It is the last day and this is what we have done the past week.
1. Bike Fit
2. Blood Test
3. Physical
4. EKG - my heart is working fine!
5. VO2, LT, and Economy test
6. Nutrition Talk
7. Got our new Skins!
8. Esols!
9. Training Peaks
10. 3PQ test - measures strength
11. Myers-Briggs (what is your personality?)

We (the girls of the group) got to meet with the wonderful nutritionist, Nanna, to learn some easy recipes and talk a little more in depth about nutrition. We cooked up some great food. Here is Chrissy getting all the water out of tofu, she did a great!

Jim, he's practically a girl, got to come and participate in the nutrition discussion. The USADA guy came alone too, I guess he was checking up on us to make sure we were being legal.

I am not home yet, but I get to fly out tomorrow. It's been a long two weeks and am really excited to get home and start practicing everything I learned in SLC!

Track Camp #2

We are back for Camp #2 and I have stayed healthy so far and it's day 3. Last time I didn't post any pictures of the track and how steep it is, I didn't even know how steep it was until I walked up to the top of the corner and looked down. WOW it's almost vertical, you don't even notice it's that steep when you are on it.

This is looking at turn 4.

This is looking down at the track in between turn 3 and 4. It's pretty steep!

I will post more, we are here for 8 days.

Airports, Airplanes, Delays, Packing, Unpacking, etc...

The Flight Attendant: “Sorry for the delay, we are currently having difficulties with the weight of the plane and the conditions. We are either going to have to unload a few passengers or eleven bags.”
Passengers then make unhappy remarks. 10:10, 10:15, 10:25, 10:40 (we were supposed to depart at 10:00). I take a look at my ticket again and my connecting flight in Denver leaves at 11:51. (I think I might make it)

We finally take off and I am hopeful. We finally arrive at DIA and it is 11:30. I think to my self I think I can make it. Hopefully the gate will be close. We are approaching the gate and everyone is getting antsy looking at there tickets and watches. Well, I finally got off the plane, it's 11:46! Can I make it? What do I do?

a. Think to myself here is no way, accept defeat, and head to the help desk.

b. My competitive nature kicks in and I decide to make a run for it.

c. Cause a commotion and yell at the flight attendant for making me miss my flight.

B is the right answer! I get off the plane and take a look at the TV departure times and see, oh yes, my flight is delayed. I am not sure how delayed, so I decide to book it to the other gate pretending that I am some Kenya runner (which is definitely not the case, I won’t run). But none the less I run and I mean run (probably 6 min miles) and make it to the gate. Did I mention that the gate I arrived at was B65 and my departing gats is B15, that’s all the way on the other side of the terminal. I run down the terminal, through the court yard, and down the other terminal. Well, let me tell you my little legs did a great job and I made it, with plenty of time to spare, about 2 hours worth of time. My flight was delayed and I have 2 hours to kill. Good thing DIA has free internet. I guess I got in a good workout!

It's not cold here!

I got so sick of the cold weather and riding inside, I picked up and headed down to Phoenix. It was so nice today I road in Shorts! Do you see the sun in the upper left corner? Yea that's right you Coloradoans no snow on the side of the roads!

Do you notice anything different about this cyclist? (hint look at the head, our bike line bikers don't look like this) For some reason this really amused me.

My awesome coach, Corey Hart, hooked me up with a place to stay at his clients house down in Phoenix. Melissa and Art, they are wonderful! Oh, and I can't forget there very cute dog Ouray. The first night I got to Phoenix they cooked me a steak dinner! Tonight we are having smoked salmon!

Happy New Years! Can't wait to ride tomorrow.

Sunny weather = Happy Carmen

Track Camp Finished

I have no pictures, sorry. It is kind of a bitter sweet for me leaving track camp. I missed out on a couple of days so I wasn't ready to leave the track. But I am excited to go home and start feeling better.

I am still pretty congested and it has now moved into my chest. I have developed this nice deep cough. I get some pretty awful glares at the airport with this nice cough. On my first flight before we took off, I had a coughing fit and the lady that was sitting in my row got up and left. She moved to another open seat. (I guess I would have done the same thing)

All in all I did have a good time at camp. I wish I could have been healthy, but at least we have one more in January!

Good luck to the girls who are doing the World Cup. Go fast, turn left, and don't stop pedaling. I am sure you all will kick some a##!

Still sick no fun!

The last couple of days of camp have not been very fun. I am still pretty congested and really just want to breath through my nose. I did get to ride today and that was much better than sitting in my room and sleeping all day. Tomorrow I get to go to the track! We will see how it goes. So until tomorrow...

Track Camp

This is day 2 at Track Camp and I am SICK! SUCKS!

I know I have been a bad blogger, but I have been very busy working, trying to training, and trying to stay warm.

So I am was off to sunny LA and couldn't wait for the warm weather! I arrived Thursday and we put our bikes together and road to the beach.

Alison Powers, Kristin Armstong, Katharine Carroll, and Lauren Franges.

Day 1 of Training Camp:
1. Road for the first time in pursuit position

2. First time doing a standing start - man that was hard

3. First time doing a pursuit - was really fun, not as scary as I was anticipating

4. First time to go that fast on a track

5. First time to change a gear - Thanks Andrew for your help!

Here I am during the warm up for the day.

This is Kat, Alison Powers, and I doing a flying 1500. This was really fun, much better than doing it by your self.

It was Alison's Birthday, so we went to the cheesecake factory.

And yes we did sing her happy birthday. Here is her bday cake, it was delicious.

Last night after we got back from dinner, my throat started to hurt. :( Kristin game me oil of oregano and wow does that stuff burn and taste bad. We will see if it works.

Day 2 of Training Camp:

Woke up this morning and my throat still hurts. Road over to the track with the girls. Did warm up with them. Look how steep the turns are. I was later sent back to the hotel to rest and get better. I have been downing the zinc and airborn. Hopefully I can get better before if gets worse. I slept a lot today and feel a little better right now. Send good thoughts to me so I can get back out there!