What a day.. I am traveling tomorrow so I switched my workouts and was going to do a five hour bike ride today. I got loaded up and headed out to a new route. It was raining a little bit but nothing to bad.
I was scheduled to do four 20 min intervals with five minute recovery and then ride out the rest at a comfortable pace.
I got warmed up and began my first interval. I felt good and was keeping on my goal pace (watts) with little trouble. As I rounded a turn in the road I noticed some railroad tracks. As I approached them I tried to square up to them because I knew rain and railroad tracks can be dangerous.
When I got close enough to see, I realized I was about to be in serious trouble. These were old railroad tracks. Most tracks have a mat that makes the gap barely noticable. When I was nearly on top of them I saw there was no mat, just a space btween the road and the track that at that moment seemed as wide as the Grand Canyon.
I hit the track, felt my bike jerk and had enough time to think “This is going to hurt!” I flipped over the handle bars, hit the pavement, and then slid off into the ditch. I lay there for a minute trying to figure out what just happened and tried to assess how bad the damage was. I know I hit my head really hard and felt like I broke my jaw. I was getting my bearings as the first passerby came up to see if I was alright. I took another moment and got to my feet. I had cut my knee and shredded my shirt into my skin, but I knew I didn’t need to go to the Dr.
My bike was a little bit of a mess but I didn’t feel like looking it over at that moment. A nice woman asked me if I needed a ride and I accepted. I put my bike in the trunk and she gave me a ride to my truck. I put my bike in and headed for home.
I got home and took a shower. That is where the fun began. I knew I had to scrub the scrapes out. There was dirt, chunks of rock and some black substance ingrained into my skin. Thankfully it didn’t hurt as bad as I thought it would.
After a good scrub it was time to take the bike to my favorite local bike shop for a damage assessment. Unfortunately the diagnosis wasn’t good. My handlebars had turned completely sideways and smashed into the top tube of my frame. What I was hoping was a paint scratch turned out to be a crack in the carbon fiber frame.
It could be fixed but it would take about three weeks. Not good considering I am going to be racing in Kona in less than six weeks. Fortunately, I am going to be able to have a new frame here early next week. The rest of the damage was just cosmetic and I needed to get a new tire since the impact sliced a good notch in the old one.
Today I was lucky enough to walk away from my first crash. Unfortunately, looking back over the day I realize how easily this incident could have been avoided. If I had slowed down a little I would have had time to assess the risk and act accordingly.
I bet I am not alone in thinking that it’s easy to beleive we should just put the hammer down and go as fast as we can and not worry about the potential obstacles. Today I came to the “crashing” realization that regardless of how fast you want to get to your goal, you need to keep your eyes open to what’s going on around you in order to make sure that you get there in one piece.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 1st, 2009, 10:06 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.