Coyote Creek Classic: The First Crash

- Cat 5
- 24 out of 33
- no team mates

Even though there were people hitting cones and crashing and riders suddenly braking while turning downhill, this course suited me. There was a gradual climb that did a nice job of stringing the field out. When I was fully warmed up which was during the middle of the race, I was able to spin up the hill on my big ring. The pace was good and it was very manageable. I still had a lot left in the tank going into the last lap. But towards the end, people were desperately trying to get to the finish. The lane was narrow and crowded. The only way I could move up was on the sides so I picked up the pace and started motoring up on the inside to the right. I was in the top 10 and began sprinting past some riders. All of a sudden at 350 meters from the line, a guy in front of me swerved to the right and his back wheel hit my front wheel. I was able to stay upright by bumping off his back wheel but I was bumped to the right and hit the sidewalk at 25.5 mph and flew around 16 mph (verified by my Garmin GPS :-). Luckily, I didn't hit one of the many fire hydrants or lights that were on the sidewalk. It happened so fast I didn't feel a thing. I just got right back up and immediately started sprinting to the finish taking someone at the line. I ended up falling back to 24th place out of 33 riders. Wrong place at the wrong time.

The damages I sustained was a scratched up bike, broken shifter name plates, bent water bottle, bent dérailleur hanger, and road rash that didn't look too bad but constantly burns like hell. What I gained was some experience and some battle scars that went with it =)

When results were posted, one of the guys said he saw me go down in front of him. He came in 10th place. To add insult to injury, his team mate to the left of me came in 5th place. I asked the guy who swerved in front of me what happened and he said one of his team mates was in front of him and hit his brakes going up the hill...just great. As if things couldn't get any worse, the first aid station was missing a bunch of supplies and had no saline to flush out the gravel in my road rash. Ahh well, gotta crash one time or another. I'm just glad I got it over with.