First of all, this is long so hopefully it makes up for my lack of attention to this in the past few weeks.
I'm a very strong believer in the statement "if you aren't falling down you aren't trying hard enough." Well, I tried hard enough today.
As I sit here flossing the dirt, sand and small rocks out of my teeth I'm trying to figure out exactly what I did wrong. Ok, let me go back and tell the entire story.
I woke up this morning not feeling the greatest. I had a ton of homework due this week and I knew I was going to be working hard all day for the next few days. Plus, it was foggy out. As I was sitting in Heat Transfer this morning I glanced out the window and noticed all the fog had burned off and there wasn't a cloud in the sky, the day suddenly got better. My mood further lifted when I realized I didn't have Fine Arts that afternoon AND my presentation for that class was pushed back a week, leaving me 4 hours of uninterrupted time to myself. My first road race of the season is this coming Saturday so I was looking forward to getting one last hard workout in before the race. My ride plan entailed approximately 40 miles, 80% of that being hills.
When I took off the air was cool, yet the sun was warm making for almost perfect riding conditions. On the initial ascent up Germantown my legs felt great and I was able to maintain a great average the entire way up.
Once I hit the top I decided to go down one road (Newberry) and come back up another (McNamee), rather than just going out and back on McNamee. Now granted, Newberry is not a difficult road. True, there's some tricky spots in it but nothing I can't handle, then again, I'd only ridden UP it, not down.
Of course, I threw myself into it with everything I had; aero position, tucked way down and highest gear the entire way. I made it through the first (and probably steepest section) with absolutely no problem after which the road flattens out and gave me some room to bleed off speed. Sitting up I looked up and saw a sign indicating a curve to the right and a speed recommendation of 15mph. Pulling through that CURVE I looked up and realized it was a whole lot more than just a simple 15mph curve. What I saw ahead of me was a set of three S-bends descending at a fairly aggressive angle. "No problem," I thought and went at it. Again, made it through the first one with no problems but looking up saw a second bend a lot tighter than I'd originally anticipated. Again, I've hit corners like this is cyclocross time and time again and come out perfectly fine. Turns out road riding is slightly different than cyclocross.
Alright, so here it goes: hurtling into the corner I tapped the brakes enough to bleed some speed yet still force me to lean into the corner to practice technique. Yeah, about that technique thing... I hit the curve at about 27 mph and saw the culvert at the apex of the bend. Immediately looking away to try and pull myself through the corner I think I moved my head but my eyes stayed fixed on the culvert (BAD IDEA!). Just like I did in cyclocross so many times, I flew wide. At the last second I turned right (off the road) to try and avoid sliding out and scraping up my entire side. Well, at least I didn't slide out.
I don't know EXACTLY what happened next because it all occurred so fast but here's my best guess. I steered off the road and buried my front wheel in a little ditch. Somehow both pedals came unclipped and I ended up separated from the bike and on the ground in front of it. I must have done at least one summersault because I remember looking back, upside down, and seeing the bike bouncing towards me. Somehow the bike ended up in front of me, did it bounce over me? Hell if I know. After my shoulder dug into the muddy clay/gravel and came to a halt I just kind of laid there trying to figure out exactly what'd happened. I knew I'd rolled and the crash had happened off-road rather than on the road so what I was experiencing was more shock than trauma. Then I realized something, I need to start breathing. The crash/fall/roll had knocked the wind out of me and I hadn't started breathing again. I kept telling my brain "breathe, come on, just inhale" but it decided it wanted to take a little longer. Eventually I started breathing in small gasps and at some point returned to normal breathing. I was able to get up, pull my bike off the road and try and assess the damage. Apart from soreness and two small cuts I felt alright. The wheels on the bike were way out of true but that's to be expected when you throw your bike off the road at 25-30mph. Long story short, I made my way slowly back to UP, my glorious 40 mile ride cut to a lame 15 or so.
As a followup, I'm alright and the bike is perfect (apart from the wheels). I know the picture to the left doesn't look like much but I think the pedal (or something) came around and hit me. I have a gigantic knot in mt lower calf and it feels like someone hit me with a baseball bat. I don't know exactly what this will do to my race on Saturday but I'm going to do everything I can to work it out of my leg before then. Also, I'm sure it'll offer a nice mosaic of blues and greens later this week.
As I said earlier, I'm essentially unscathed. I suffered a small cut to the face from my helmet and sunglasses (one disadvantage of half jackets) and some minor cuts to the leg but aside from a few cuts and soreness I'm fine. What's even better, the bike is in great shape. I looked the entire thing over and the only thing that had mud on it was the pedals and a piece of the shifter. The picture to the right shows the only actual "damage" to the bike.
Overall, I'm pretty happy. Both my collarbones are still intact, my bike is fine (apart from the rims but I was going to build tubulars anyway, right?) and I've had my first real crash. While the calf soreness is less than ideal I think it's a fair trade for no broken bones or bike parts.
And finally, the bike that survived.
Ok, I've put off homework long enough, back to it.
