Hanes Park Crash 08/09/09

I had a terrible accident today. A rider shot across my front wheel (from left to right) and I went head first onto the ground. My face is trashed (30-40% road rash on right side of face), my jersey is ripped, my lip had to have two stitches, my temporary teeth were broken out and I suffered a concussion. I got knocked out I hit the ground so hard. I’ve got rash on my shoulder, knee & wrist as well. My wrists are banged up (from trying to catch myself) and my right leg has some road rash. I was rushed off to the ER in a Ambulance (pretty cool—haven’t done that in a while). The CAT scan showed everything was cool.

Shame really. I happened with 3 to go. It was around 34 minutes into the race when we were going up the hill. We were traveling around 19mph. All I remember was yelling at him, hitting the deck and looking at the curb thinking to myself “that’s going to hurt.” The EMT’s said I remembered everything when I got up and that I was coherent, but I only remember bits and pieces. I do remember yelling at the peleton as they stormed by me on the final lap so that’s a bit of a consolation. Needless to say, I’m not going to race this coming weekend. It’s 4 hours away and at the moment, I would rather train closer to home for my wife’s sake. I was over 3 hours away from home when this happened and she was at work so this really scared her. It opened my eyes as well. This was something that I could truly not control.

The thing is, my collarbone’s not broken. My wrists aren't’ broken (my teeth don’t count) and my bike is perfectly fine—I think. That being said, I don’t want to take the chance to miss my priority race because of some squirrely rider.

How was the race up until that point? Perfect. I put in a good long warm-up and my 2 minute threshold efforts were solid. As an aside, I think my threshold power is around 295-305w now. For the race, I was at the front the entire time around 10-15th spot. With 5 to go, I moved to 5-10th spot. I only had my nose in the wind once and that was short lived because of a preme. I felt great. The average HR for this race was 172bpm, speed 24.5 and it had 1 significant hill with 2 little risers. For me to stay in it shows that I am in form and smarter about hills racing in general. Also, I had a friend say that he would lead me out that sealed the deal. I crashed and my friend ended up winning so I’m very happy for him. I talked to him a bit after the race and he said I’m sure you are hurting. I told him that not being able to finish hurts more.