Salina, KS crit

I made my way out to Salina on Sunday to race a cat 3/4 crit. X and Joe fashion came along.

The best part of the trip might have been eating at the Cozy Inn. The race was pretty awesome but this Cozy Inn place was amazing. Not something you find everyday.

The race...

21 starters. 3/4 field. i'm a 4. lot's of the 3's did the open race so it was not as hard as it could have been. It was still hard.

The first 3 or 4 laps were crazy hard and crazy fun. Hard racing is fun when you are strong enough to keep up and contribute. Hard races suck when you're slow. I was keeping up just fine but after 5-10 minutes i was just waiting for the strongest of the race to break away so everyone could start riding a more realistic pace. The strongest was Spencer. He broke away. The racing got easier.

Joe fashion actually broke away with him and the two of them were off the front for a bit but Joe said Spencer was just too fast so he eventually dropped back to the pack.

I was having a great time marking any moves that attempted to bridge and really enjoying feeling like i was part of the race. that's a new development this year and an extremely welcome one. Of course i had an easy ride since teamate Spencer was off the front. I drafted the whole time. Eventually Joe recovered from his first trip off the front and got another gap on us and held it to the line for second place. Spencer won.

I decided to have a little fun and pulled the field for a quarter of the last lap. i knew there was no danger of us catching Joe or Spencer (Spencer almost lapped us) and i wanted to push myself. This effort led to me taking pretty much a last place of the field sprint.

But i didn't care.

It was fun.

X raced but there were only 3 of them. One girl was dropped after about 15 minutes so X and the other gal rode reasonably until the very end. X won, but barely (see pic below). It was a 8 corner flat crit and she attacked after corner 6. The last two corners were pretty strong head wind sections so she had to push hard. She lined up for my race 10 minutes later but got dropped after a few laps. No harm in that. i'm blaming it on spencer. the start of our race seemed wicked fast.

Now on to the Cozy Inn.

This place is awesome. It's 90 years old, has a total of 6 bar stools, and serves hamburger sliders with locally grown beef ground that day. It felt like sitting in history. If you're ever in Salina you have to stop there. The burgers were amazing and the place is totally unique.

It's nice to drive west on I70 for a change. 75 mph speed limit!

X's volvo has a bum sun roof so we used the garmin suction cup to hold it down and eliminate the noise. It was joe's idea.

Then Joe went one better and pulled out the duct tape so we could seal it from the outside. The noise was so awful and the car is so old that we didn't care about aesthetics.  Plus the roof racks hides it.

Colavita lovin, pre race.

X in action.

The fields were small but the course was waaay fun and there were payouts for pretty much every race. Plus they put the finish under this cross walk awning which gave it a legit feel. 

X's sprint finish. Looks like she one by about a wheel.

Post race, i'm the one who needs a shave.

Open race leaders.

And again.

And again, w/ salina statue.

Cozy Inn.

Opened in 1920 and i read this is the original grill.

Look how old those napkin holders are. So cool.

Speaks for itself.

Saw this guy while driving home. i'm sure he did the mountain bike race in Manhattan.  I wanted to do it but you cant be two places at once.