Rubber side up

For the record, this is the second time I've typed this us. My computer crashed and lost the first version...

Last weekend was the UVM bike races, the last weekend before L'Enfer du Nord, the ECCC championships at Dartmouth. The first day was the TTT and road race, the second was the crit on the UVM campus. The TTT went fine, we didn't go all that hard, were very unorganized, and ended up halfway down the field. I was more excited for the road race though since it ended on a 20% climb up Mt. Philo outside of Burlington, VT. Being a smaller, 145 lbs biker with a semi-low gear, I like climbs. UVM has a bunch of wonderful race courses around Burlington, but instead of using the many scenic paved roads, they decided that it would be cool for a third of the race to be on a dusty, potholed, packed dirt road. Don't get me wrong, I like dirt roads, but not as much for long parts of races. This wasn't a short connector between two awesome pavement roads, this was a lot of dirt for no real reason...

I started the road race feeling GREAT. I could move up and down in the pack with little effort, I sat about 5 or 6 wheels back from the front of the pack (so somewhere around 15th). I probably should have been higher up in the pack, but I wanted to get some other Dartmouth riders together before moving up there. Around five and half miles into the race (on the dirt) there was a long somewhat winding downhill with more than it's fair share of potholes. Just my luck, the Harvard rider sitting two wheels up from me hit a pothole head on and started to crash. The guy slightly behind him and to the right (we were on the far left side of the pack) from Yale hit him, and then next came me. I had three choices, swerve right and take out most of the pack, go left and go head on into a tree, or just go straight through the two of them. As I really had no time to react (and my eyes were probably closed by then accepting my fate) I went head on, without really breaking, into the two riders and their bikes. After the impact I remembered a Yale rider going over me as I looked up at the sky, thinking "oh man that hurt a bit".

After that I got up and made sure everyone was fine (there were 4 crash victims), no big injuries to report, and after a minute or so, I checked out my bike, surprisingly it was ridable. After fixing the seat and picking up my water bottle I set off again, solo, with some road rash on my elbow, upper arm and knee. I was able to complete the race, but without the benefit of a pack, around 12 minutes out of the lead.

The next day my luck turned a bit, I was able to have the best Crit for me ever. I finished at the back of the lead pack, much better than last weekend's off the back, getting pulled from the race.

So for now I'm looking ahead to next weekend's races, while nursing my bruised and bloodied (well not too much blood) body.