So we finished up the Salida weekend pretty well. Beth won the crit and the overall omnium, so I'd say mission accomplished. Well, not quite because I guess the mission was the sweep the podium in the crit. I kind of failed on that part.

Anyway, we had a lot of fun.

We had some frothy beverages after the crit.

And Missy tried to molest Beth later that night.

As a little bonus, I ran in to an old friend today.

Yup, that's Ernie my high school sweetheart. I haven't seen him in a few years, but he's been living in Salida for a while now. What I find even scarier than the fact that we went to the prom 19 years ago is that we are totally old enough to be Amy D's parents.

(literally old enough.)

This morning we went out for a little spin in Salida.

Really, it's real purty here.

I did learn a new trick with the 2-bike-tripod stand.

Sea-Ray also spent some time cleaning her bike this morning. There's much more to come later about the race this afternoon....

Check out the sweet view from our rental house this weekend.

Seriously, it's awesome here.

This morning the guys are eager in anticipation for the road race.

Beth shows us her secret for keeping up on the climbs.


Katie Monahan also shows her secret, a 10lb necklace around her neck.

The race pretty well. A to the D Dombroski won, Beth was 4th and still in the lead for the omnium. I finished.

Today was day one of the Salida Omnium and I'd say things went pretty well. Beth won!

Later she contemplates what kind of milk she'll buy while still in her chamios. It's not everyone who'll go shopping in their skinsuit.

The Chicken is OUT! Rasmussenpoop got the boot from the Tour too. You know I actually liked Vino, but Rasmussen... I'm glad to see that guy go. He's a real douche.

Alexander Vinokourov, the biggest douche in the Tour de France.

You know what a chocolate power bar looks like on a hot ride when it gets all soft and gooey?

If you said poop, then you're right.

Taking a page out of VC's Deer Trail race tactic book, team Astana blew up the field in today's tour stage.

Later, Vino tries to perform a Jedi mind trick on the rest of the peloton... "You do not want to attack me. You feel weak as a kitten. You will lose massive amounts of time when I attack in the Pyrenees."

The other day we played bump and thump with the juniors while we were waiting for the track to clear.

We had a few tumbles, but everyone was ok. Unfortunately, today wasn't so good because one of the kids crashed and broke his collarbone. He broke rule #1 of the track... Don't Stop Pedaling. That's because when you stop pedaling at 30 mph your bike doesn't so much want to stop that quick, so it kicks you right off just to spite you.

One thing I did learn this week, is that 11-year old Ben and I have the same size foot.

So, another busy weekend with camp, but at least this time I got to ride my bike and actually coach. This was the last camp, so maybe now I can catch up on some work, sleep, and having an actual day off sometime.

But I didn't get to relish finishing camp for long. I had to leave immediately from CTS to drive up to Longmont for the state crit in the afternoon.

This kid was nervous in anticipation of the women's race starting.

He didn't need to be though because we had the race in control, and Beth ripped off a great sprint to take the win.

It was a great team effort and one of the few races that all 5 of us have been able to do all together.

What the ...??? I went to the velodrome to race and no one was home.

Apparently track racing had been canceled due to weather.... bright, sunny weather I guess.

I was really bummed because I didn't want to actually do an interval workout tonight. The most I could motivate myself for was some hot laps on the crit course in the park. Literally, it's a 1km course designed for the 1986 world's right in the middle of the park.

Think I'll make it?

I'm about to go out for my ride and of course it's going to rain because I had to procrastinate all day. By procrastinate I mean work of course.

I've had a pretty busy weekend, so we went out tonight to blow off some steam and play the ponies at the Mantiou Springs arcade.

Here Mike is on about his 20th game going head to head with this 12 year old. That kid was in to that game.

Donna gets her fortune told.

And then it was game on for the Dance Dance Revolution...or DDR as the kids call it.



You have just been served!

So after my races on the 4th, we went back to the track to watch the rest and the fireworks show.


The fireworks in Colorado Springs go on right in the park with the velodrome. So we always have a cracking good time between the racing and 4th festivities.

Grand finale.

After the fireworks I went to go pick up my sister from the airport. Then she did this to my hair. Mostly it just makes me look like one of my nieces.

Is it time to race yet? Uuugh, the bad thing about track racing is it takes 6 hours to get through a few races. I did the Keiren, which is not my favorite. I was out in both rounds. But then I got to do the points race, which IS my favorite race. It went ok. I think I finished 3rd after a daring solo break for about 15 laps to take 3 sprint laps in a row. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite enough for the W.

Poor Mark kept warming up and warming up for the race that never happened this morning.

Instead we all huddled under the VC tent for the rain delay. Lucky for the women it started raining immediately after our points race. Unlucky for the men, their scratch race got delayed once again.

More on the festivities of the 4th later...

Bring on Junior Track Nationals. Clay and I have been working with the Front Rangers team for the past few months in preparation for nationals. A lot of these kids had very little track experience coming in to this year, so to see them able to be competitive here against these mini-pros is fantastic.

Coach Clay giving one of the riders a pre-race strategy talk.

Katie and Mark stopped by to watch a bit of the racing.

Folks, if you want to see some fireworks before the fireworks on the 4th, come down and watch the guys in the madison get girl'd by Katie tomorrow night. It's going to be a great show. Oh yah, I'm racing too, but don't expect any fireworks.... maybe don't even expect any sparklers out of me.

So the last day of camp was yesterday. We all had a great time.

Coach Adam showed us some good moves on the skills ride.

We learned that Coach Jane is BFFs with Mara Abbott. (Literally, not like some people just say they are BFF with famous pro riders.)

We also learned that coach Jane has a big crush on Coach Gord.

We saw Brady combat an addiction to sunscreen.

We also finally cracked Brady by the end of camp. Poor, newbie resident coach at camp had to do all the grunt work. I think we exhausted him.

We also had to say good-bye to Coach Gord who is done with his training and is getting ready to open his training center in Tucson.