Wednesday, May 6, 2009

The magic of icing

Well, it happened. My first race crash. I debated posting about it because my mom reads my blog, and she and Dad already think I'm insane for being a bike racer. The good news is that I'm largely uninjured. My worst injury is a huge bruise on the outside of my left thigh. It's really nasty. Unfortunately, I didn't discover it until I got home.

My other injuries were a banged up and slightly scraped knee and what I first thought was a sprained thumb. Luckily, my teammate Cathy R gave me an ice pack, which I applied to the knee and the thumb and after a while they didn't hurt any more and the swelling had gone down. The end result is that the places that got iced didn't really bruise, didn't swell, and barely hurt later that day. The places that did not get iced are still swollen and tender 3 days later. So my advice is this: ice immediately, and you will feel better for it.

So, how did it happen? Well I was racing the A/B race at Wells Ave on Sunday, and the guys started off really slow. People were chit-chatting in the field, things like "Hey, good to see you again!" and "Yeah, this is my first race of the season". There was a bit of sketchiness and people were probably not giving the race their full attention.

After about 4 laps I wasn't even breathing hard, so you know this was just a walk in the park on a Sunday morning. Anyway, in the first turn, all of a sudden a guy in the row in front of me and a couple of places to my right starts losing it. (He later said that the rider in front of him grabbed the brakes.) He fell to his left, which was basically right in front of me. I was in the middle of the pack, there were riders on both sides of me, and I didn't have an exit path. I braked as much as I thought I could and the next thing I knew I was on the ground.

I felt something brush my shoulder and instinctively ducked and covered my head with my arms. Apparently this was the right thing to do because Cathy later told me that someone went flying over me and landed hard. I feel fortunate that I walked away with such minor injuries. The original guy apparently broke his collarbone. There were at least 7 or 8 people that were taken down in the crash.

Geoff stopped to make sure I was okay, as did Cathy and possibly one or two other teammates. I remember Christine asking if I was all right. We discovered that my rear wheel was a taco, so there would be no more racing for me that day. I'm not sure I would have wanted to continue anyway, I was feeling a bit shaken at that point. Cathy decided she was done and she told Geoff to jump back in. He checked that was ok with me, and I told him to go ahead. Cathy walked me back to the start/finish, gave me ice, and I hung out with some other teammates and friends and watched the rest of the race.

Patrick gave me and my bike a ride home (so Geoff didn't have to cycle home to get the car and come back for me). Then I took the bike up to the Loft in the afternoon to get the frame checked out and have the wheel rebuilt. I'm bummed because that powertap wheel was my birthday present from September and I haven't had it very long.

But I'd rather have a wrecked wheel than a wrecked leg, arm, collarbone, or head. As much as I love my bike, it's just a bike and I'm happy that I walked away with minimal bodily harm.

At least this gets my first race crash out of the way. ("First and last," Rebecca said.)

I'll be racing Sterling on Saturday and I actually think I'll enjoy a smaller field with just women for a change. ;-)

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