Velo De Animas Century

Corey "Big time" Collier at the helm in the Westy!
The Sangre De Cristo Moutain range
The collegiate peaks from our campsite outside Salida @ 6 a.m.
We were looking for coffee and found this Synchro Westy, so sweet!
Pre race, Westy was a mess, slept awesome and she got us there and back

Mike Carrol and my bro Zach cruising. we lost Mike to a flat. 50 miles back solo, ouch!

My bro was so worked after the ride that he just left his skiddy on!

Not much to report about Salida race. The course was awesome, the field was stacked, and the legs actually felt o.k. for not doing any hard efforts since the Tour de Delta. I just didn't have the mental focus to suffer and wasn't really into the race. It was pretty negative all around, a break went, I attacked a bunch, RMCF covered every attack with a few guys, I blew myself up along with most of the fudge guys, then threw in the towel and rode back to town. I liked the course, and Salida was a cool town and nice area, just when you race all the time, it is tough to pin the numbers on anymore this late in the season.

The Camping in the Westfalia van was awesome. I slept like a baby and felt nice and refreshed. I could have done without the race and just did a sweet camp and fishing trip up there as the Arkansas river is supposed to be some really good fishing.

After not dong so well yesterday and getting the legs opened back up I decided to do another good day of training. My brother really wanted to do the Durango Century ride from Durango to Farmington. It started about 300 yards from my house so I rolled out of bed late, grabbed a quick bit and some coffee and just made it at 6:55 to registration. There was just enough time to have my bro pin on my number and we were off at 7:00.

I had a blast riding with all those people and they were stoked that I came out to attend. The entry goes to a good cause and it is a great training ride. Some people took it pretty serious and it was definitely a bit sketchy at times. There was more chopping going on before the dirt road than at a Ginsu Knife convention. Some guy with a sweet rat tail mullet chopped my brother and almost crashed him out! Karma got him as he soon flatted and was forced to abandon the ride but not without using every cussword known to man. Relax dude, it is a fun tour!

I had no plans of riding this tour as a race and considered it would be pretty lame for a pro to crush the weekend warriors. Well some people had other plans and as I just followed wheels soon it was a group of three and then my bro and I. We rode for about 30 miles swapping off to the finish. I waited for him at the end because I didn't want to be the first guy in. We ended up finishing within about 45 seconds of the record time from last year of 3:51:oo or something like that. Whatever, it was fun and awesome to be out with my brother.

Best part was after the ride my brother was so worked and starving he looked for the post ride feed put on by the tour. Well he went to the first picnic tables that he saw with food. It turned out not to be the actual tour feed, but a church party on Sunday afternoon. He jumped in the food line and filled his plate and stuffed his face. He said "people kept looking at me all funny, and I finally noticed that there were no other riders there". He finished his meal and came over to the real post race feed, ate some more. Awesome! Nice work Zach, it was good to ride with you.

Rest day tomorrow! Sweet, Contador won the Tour de France, whatever?