Sunday, March 21, 2010

Wet, cold, crash...

What an awful day. Cold and wet. The C's where just phoning it in. I actually had to get out front just so I could get warmed up enough to stay on the bike. We where on the North Bradner course, which is normally my favorite.

We started with about 25 people. Where down to about 15 by the last lap. I was well positioned at the front, or so I thought, but going up one of the small climbs on the back side I guess I slowed a bit too much and all of a sudden was in the middle, someone crossed my wheel in front of me and down I went.

 The bike and front wheel got the worst of it. Luckily Marsh Coopers parents where close by with their pickup and kindly offered a ride back to the parking lot.

I ended up with some road rash on my left knee and a bad bruise on my right leg (I think from the top tube.) and possibly a bruised rib on the left. Amazingly neither shoulder hit anything. I seem to remember bringing my arms in so that I would roll, and that was due to not wanting to screw up my shoulders any more. In fact I think the bruised rib is from rolling over my left elbow as it was tucked in :-)

Also I was lucky that this was on a small climb, so going fairly slow, which also meant I didn't get run over by the people behind me. I think another two or three people went down. Jasmine Glasner was able to get back up and rejoin the group. There was one other rider who also had some bike problems so also had to get a ride.



The wheel looks worse, I think, than it is. It is a Bontrager Aeolus 5.0 and these are actually just Bontragers carbon rim with a carbon shroud added. And it appeared that only the shroud was damaged. Hopefully Rob Mulder will be able to repair that.

Meanwhile the bike is at the shop so they can fix the bars, shifters etc. Again it looked like mostly superficial scratches there. May need to rerun cables etc.

4 comments:

Mark said...

ouch. Hope you and the bike will feel better.

Judith said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Judith said...

Glad you were not too badly hurt, the wheels and bike are replaceable but still tragic when it happens, Bontrager rims.....:-(

Careful of your rib, my last crash I slept badly for about a week, went back and asked for another xray and they found two of my ribs were cracked.....no treatment other than rest and they found I had a minor lung puncture, you could see my lung was smaller on the damaged side in the xray, I had no real symptoms other than pain, so if you develop any shortness of breath, get it checked ASAP!

sl149q said...

Fortunately, I think just a bruise. No shortness of breath. When I crashed at the track two years ago and broke my collarbone we didn't notice the ribs until the next week. And at that point it was a quick palpitation, whip out the stethoscope, and then "yes, you cracked your ribs, nothing we can do, no need to take xrays, go home take some pain killers, it will take 6-8 weeks ...".