Went to Manhattan, Kansas last weekend. It was a whole lot of fun. The reason for going was a few collegiate bike races.

On Friday, I met Dave, Lance, Joe, and Evan around 4:30 to head south in the minivan from the U of I motorpool. It was about a 6 and a half hour drive from Iowa City. We stopped along the way to eat and got to Manhattan a little bit after midnight Saturday morning.

Our race on Saturday was a road race around 12:40. We got to sleep in a little and we also ate at the village in before the race. The race was on some country roads about 20 minutes from Manhattan. The race I competed in was 26 miles. It started off pretty slow in the big group of riders. It was also pretty flat at that point also. Then around a turn with about 10 miles to go the guys in the front put the hammer down. I tried to stay up, but got left behind soon after. I didn't do that bad. I think I placed about 15th out of 25-30 riders. I'm not totally pleased with that result, but I didn't crash and it was pretty fun. Two of the riders on my team got 2nd and 3rd. I would be very pleased with that result.

The race on Sunday was a Criterium on the KSU campus. It was 40 minutes long on a course that was abou a half mile long. Crits are really not my favorite. They pretty much consist of really strong riders pedaling as fast as possible for the entire race. I don't know what I placed at the end of the race, but it might have been better than the road race because a lot of people dropped out due to the intensity of the race. I had Dave take a few photos during the B crit and I took a few of him during the A race. They came out alright. It is taking the photos too long to upload on this page, but they can be found on the Iowa Cyling Photos webpage.