If memory serves me right (which it doesn’t always), I have never crashed before in a road race of any sort.  Now this is not to say that I have not had very close encounters with crashes in road racing.  Indeed, many a time, I have found myself standing with my bike, one foot unclipped, as screaming women fall onto my legs and wheels.  Torn shorts, cherry-red, road-rashed rumps, broken bikes abound, and me, with nothing less than a chainring to the ankle.  I have tip-toed out of said piles of bodies quietly, clipped back in, and raced back on, as the group rolls onward.  The battlefield of the NCR peloton.

This is not to say I have not crashed in races.  I have crashed countless times in mountain bike racing, resulting in broken bikes, torn ligaments, gashes requiring multiple stitches, cracked helmets, you name it.  But not in road racing.  Crashing in road racing is scary…

I have crashed my road bike before.  Once on the group ride, of all places.  Just picture it: inexperienced CAT 4 girl shows up to Tucson group ride; makes it out to Sahuarita with a pack of dudes on the Wednesday ride; looks behind her for one freakin’ second, and someone, who ought to know better, rides around a big rock right in front of her and doesn’t call it out.  CAT 4 girl crashes and makes a big scene.  Road rash from head to toe.   Flask of whiskey during the wound-scrubbing ceremony.  Embarrassement on subsequent group rides…fun stuff.

Well, as you might imagine, the cycle has been broken.  Rewind to last Saturday: the infamous UA Crit.  As co-promoter of the crit, I was responsible for finding an EMT to be on site for the day.  Let me just throw it out there right here, right now, that no one else bothered to use his services, so I was really just being a good promoter.  Really.

Let me also say, that said crash occurred no less than three corners from the finish line.  I was in the midst of the perfect lead-out.  Our team had one rider (Marilyn) off the front, and the pack had settled to race for second place.  Our sprinter was in the pack, and we had been attacking the group.  They were getting tired.  With less than a lap to go, we started the lead-out.  As I took over the final lead-out into the finish, I ramped up the speed a lot.  I knew Chloe Monster was right behind me, and she is a good sprinter, and our best sprinter Mary, was right behind her.  It was perfect.  But suddenly, as I hit the 3rd corner from the finish, I became air-borne.  It was spectacular.  I hit the ground spinning to the right, and luckily, Chloe missed riding over my head by millimeters.  I felt her wheel graze my helmet.  I’m glad she is a mountain biker.  No one else went down, for which I am incredibly grateful, because I would feel like a massive a-hole for crashing anyone else.  As if I don’t feel like enough of an a-hole already.

The best part of it all is that we got to use the EMT that we hired.  He was great and wrapped up my bloody hand-burger knuckles and cleaned off my road rash.  Fortunately, it was a relatively mild crash given the speed.  If one can skid nicely, wearing nothing but spandex, then skid nicely I did.  The impact was mild, and I had almost no bruising.  My knuckles however, are nasty.

Having now broken the cycle of not crashing in road races, I plan to start the cycle over again.  No more crashing.  Nuff said.