Racing Crash: The 1st Edition

It’s been a while coming for me but last night it finally happened; I popped my cherry of bike racing crashes at Greenbelt last night. It was a pretty large crash in the number of guys that went down and were ultimately affected by it as the initial crasher was in the very middle of the pack when he went down. Apparently he crossed wheels with a rear wheel in front of him and couldn’t regain his balance from there. There was basically a road wide fall out of riders with a large group having to stop behind the crash group. No one was terribly hurt and even more remarkably it looked like all of the bikes got out relatively unscathed a well.

Aside from a sore ass and wrist and a small scrap on my knee I am fine as well. The body of course was sore this morning and I stuck to the sheets ever so slightly last night but otherwise I’m good as new. Unfortunately I still didn’t sleep well due to my anxiety and excitement for the big day tomorrow. The WaPo is certainly not helping with the anxiety part.

The race itself was going really well and we at least three guys well positioned at all times leading up to the crash. Michael, Joe and I each had good long breakaways that helped keep the pace a bit higher this week then last week. I managed to get upfront to try and help Joe’s breakaway survive which was pretty fun and we were actively discussing things going on in the race as well. After my near lap long time off the front I took a couple of laps to recover and was beginning to feel good again and was actively moving back up to th front of the pack when the crash occurred.

I was naturally pretty disappointed after the crash especially considering that I was feeling pretty decent and felt I had a good chance for a strong finish. In stead I took a couple of laps out and then jumped back in to try and help pull back a rider who took advantage of a pack slow down after the crash to allow riders to get back into the pack and put in a hard attack. I think I helped close the gap quite a bit before being and attacked and then subsequently shelled after that. All the better though at that point, I pulled off and watched the rest of the race from the sidelines.

The remaining two Union riders at the finish, Joe and Chris managed very respectable 11th and 12th place finishes respectively in probably one of the largest fields of the year at this race so all was certainly not lost.

This pic was from before the Greenbelt race last week, Joe, Mikhail, Chris and me. As you can see I like to dream. Have a few more which I thought I got loaded but apparently not. I will put those up when I get a chance as well.

Next week will hopefully have a different outcome for the final Greenbelt race of the season. We should have a strong Union force once again in the B race though.