Even after going to bed so late, for some reason, I woke up at 3:45 AM. I was really hungry at the time so I got up and had something to eat. I felt pretty awake and didn’t want to just get back into bed and just lay there, so I took an Ambien. Even with that it still took me another 45 minutes to fall back to sleep. When I awoke at 8 AM, I felt pretty groggy. Surprisingly my body didn’t feel that bad. The road rash kind of hurt but I didn’t feel too many more bruises or sore spots than last night. I was glad I wore the CamelBak as it took the brunt of the fall on my back. You can see how my jersey was shredded to pieces but I only received a couple of small raspberries on the left side of my back, where the CamelBak didn’t cover.
Heather was still sleeping so I figured she decided to bag her race. This was probably a wise idea as she is just recovering from a cold and doesn’t do well with limited sleep. After breakfast, I went to work on fixing my crashed bike from last night. I started with truing the rear wheel. I’m not sure what hit it but it must have been hit by something as it had a sharp bend in the rim that I couldn’t get perfectly straight. It was still rideable so I decided to race on it. Then I uninstalled the carbon fork to inspect it for cracks and was happy when I didn’t find any.
It looks like the front wheel took the brunt of the impact. Judging from the damage to it, I think what happened is that the rider who came into me must have hooked my handlebar (probably due to over-reacting to bumping into me). This lifted my front end up off the road and turned my bars 90°, perpendicular to the direction of travel. Then when the front end landed on the pavement, the wheel just taco’d. Anyway, that’s my theory on how the wheel could be damaged in this manner without hitting an inanimate object — since I was at the front of the group, there was nothing for me to hit!
After I got the bike put back together and adjusted I packed up and we headed downtown. It was sunny and hot and I was still feeling kind of tired. I started the race at the front and hammered from the gun, again. At first, I thought it was going great as I had the field strung out behind me. Then about 3/4’s the way into the first lap I started to fade rapidly. As everyone came around me I was dying. Today was not going to be a good day! After recovering a bit, I tried to stay up at the front of the field. Even though it was a smaller field than last night, it was still fast. I watched as the winning break got away and my legs were such that there was nothing I could do about it. So I just became pack fodder at that point. I did take some pulls to try and help reel the break in, so maybe my teammates had a shot, but I was getting more and more fatigued as the race went on.
Late in the race, my chain started skipping. At first, I thought it just needed a derailleur adjustment. I kept dinking with the downtube barrel adjuster, but could never get it to go away. I would look down and noticed it was skipping up, so I loosened the tension. Then it would do it again and I’d tighten the tension, to no avail. This went on for like 5 laps until I came to the realization that the skip was occurring at a specific interval, so it must be something with the chain. I probably had a kink in it which was not fixable on the bike.
I knew at that point I shouldn’t be sprinting with it skipping like. So when I thought we only had one lap to go, I dropped off the back of the pack. Unfortunately, I misread the official’s signals and we still had 4 laps to go! I guess there was a reason why I didn’t hear a bell the last time around! Well, it was too late to chase back on so I just pulled myself. One of my teammates ended up doing well in the sprint and got sixth, so at least that was a decent result. When I got to the car, I checked out my chain and found the bad link. It was right at the replacement pin and it looked like it was just about to pop apart! Good thing I stopped when I did!
I was disappointed with my DNF today but I guess last night took more out of me than I thought. There’s still a few more good races this season so I just need to rest and recover from these injuries. I had a high-volume week planned this week, but I think I”m going to take a week off and let my body recover. Even though it may not feel like it, heeling injuries takes a lot of energy. This may also help with my training as I was feeling on the edge of overtraining during Superweek. So maybe a short break is just what I need right now.