First bike crash

I have these couple of race photos courtesy of Amy Jones (www.amyjones.zenfolio.com).

This past weekend was great, had Wick and Kyle up the night before the last Trade Zone crit of the year. Since I knew there was a chance they would be racing the 4/5 race (on the wait list), I sabotaged them with bellies full of heavy banana pancakes. It didn't really dampen their performance, but it made them have upset stomachs.

The weather was not great for the race. Low 40s and drizzling. The 2nd turn of the first lap of the race was not great. That's where I experienced my first bike crash. The guy whose wheel I was on bit it right in front of me and I had no option. I tried to lay it down smoothly and disperse the impact across my back. Right after I felt okay, just my left elbow hurt a bit. I grabbed both bikes (my handlebars where tangled in his rear spokes) and carried them to the grass to get them out of the way of the race. The guy who crashed in front of me somehow face planted and was checking to make sure he had all his teeth. He wound up being okay. Here is a photo of him: http://amyjones.zenfolio.com/p777069899/h1c370df2#h131ca863

After detangling the bikes and straightening out my handlebars, I was able to hop on to the group on the next lap around and it was kind of like it never happened.


This race seemed to be easier than the race last week. I didn't do so hot with stopping my computer from recording my cool down laps, but once I take those out of the equation, I could get a sense for the comparison to last week.

I actually took out the first lap of both races too being that I crashed in the first lap and the stats don't really tell the story of the race. Average speed this week was 24 mph (over the laps I counted as "race" laps) and last week it was 24.5mph. Average heart rate this week was 166.8 bpm (again, with taking out the first lap and "cool down" laps) and last week it was 169.1 bpm (with no break-away attempts).

I hope this means that I'm getting a little better form, but who knows.

I felt the race was easy so I took a flyer (photo above passing a lapped rider) around lap 8 or 9 of 15 and I think I remained out in front for 2 and a half laps. Nobody came with me and Wick (and apparently one of my NCVC teammates) "blocked" on the front of the group, so I could get a little distance. I tried to break away again with 2 laps left, but wound up pulling the field (1st photo of this post) up until the last 3/4 of a lap. Not great tactically, but good training.

If you go to my race data (http://connect.garmin.com/activity/2560915) and click on the "heart rate" tab, you can see my 2 attacks of the race, both times with my heart rate shooting up over 180, then trickling down...and down :) until I got reabsorbed. You can also "see" my crash which is the area right after the first heart rate spike. Garmin keeps recording the heart rate, even when you've stopped, but it doesn't factor it in to the average; hence why there is over 53 minutes of heart rate data for 46 minutes of riding (recording some extra before the race too).

As far as the results from the crash, I think my rear derailleur is bent a bit. On my last couple of rides I've been getting a little phantom shifting. I think it's sitting a little too far inward towards the hub. As far as I go, the thing that hurt the most initially was my left elbow (hit the ground) and behind my left knee (don't know what part, but the bike hit it). Since then, the soreness has crept up...left glute (where the biggest road rash is), neck (presumably from stiffening and holding my head off the ground as I crashed), right lat and right shin.

Nothing major and all of it, but the minor scrapes, is mostly gone.

I found my new favorite ride in the D.C. area on Tuesday. I had just enough daylight to get it in on Tuesday and wound up riding for about an hour and 15 mins and 22 miles. One of my teammates sent out an email saying they would be in the park doing hill sprints on a loop consisting of Ridge, Ross and Beach, so even though I was going later, I decided to give the route a try.

The loops start only 2 miles from our apartment and the loop itself is about 3.6 miles. It's perfect if I want to stay close to home and want to measure the remaining daylight against the 11 minute (for me) loops. It's also great because the car traffic is at a minimum, but unfortunately the squirrel traffic is high. Also not perfect is that after I destroyed myself around the loop a few times, my cooldown on the way home starts with a 10% wall and is uphill the whole 2 miles.

Ride info here:
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/2606661

Next time it would be great to warm up around the loop twice instead of once and then hit the loop hard more than 4 times. Just couldn't do it this time with the lack of sunlight.

Above is a pic from my iPhone when I was out on the loop yesterday doing an easy 45 minutes to cool down from Tuesday's hard workout. You can't really tell, but it's a good little drop off down the cliff to Beach Drive.

It's supposed to rain today, but I'll try to get in another hard workout today, hopefully outside on this course or inside on the trainer. I'll go hard again on Saturday and not sure about next week as I prepare for Jeff Cup, a 30-mile road race on Sunday, March 29th. I might not do a hard workout next week or maybe just on Tuesday and do medium efforts the rest of the week.