Nationals Flop...

Had the Elite Nationals crit last night and went out in pretty awesome fashion... Not the kind of awesome I was hoping for though.

The race was probably the sketchiest race I have ever done... Not sure if I will ever do it again, there is just enough experience by some of the riders that they think they know what they are doing but not enough to know when certain risks shouldn't be taken... I would get chopped by about 5 guys EVERY corner EVERY lap from lap 1 on... Then one guy gets the gaul to yell at me as I am sinking back into the single file field behind Strange when I came to the side of him coming out of corner because I had a little more speed through the corner but I didn't want to chop him so I sank back to my spot... Well, this guy had chopped me muiltiple times and as I'm sinking back he tries to come around me and take Strange's wheel and asks me why I;m fighting so hard for the wheel. My reply was "Why are you fighting so hard for the wheel? I'm just sinking back to where I was..." I don't feel like I should need to get into some big diatribe in the middle of a race when some nimrod wants to tell me how to race my bike when clearly the dude doesn't know how to race his when he's chopping 1 lap into the race... Anyways, stepping off my soap box...

This brings me to my first crash... On the top part of the 4 corner course there was a slight uphill before turn 3 causing things to bunch up and allowing people to carry speed through the inside to chop the corner. Then a slight downhill on a short straightaway and narrow road into turn 4. Well, I got chopped by some dude in turn 3 and he clipped his pedal right in front of me in turn 4. I had nowhere to go but right into him, flipping me over the handle bars, breaking my frame, destroying my saddle, and putting a nice gaping hole in the butt of my shorts... Shimano put me on one of their Orbeas and sent me back on my way. Two laps after re-entering the race, Accelerating out of one of the corners the pedal came off the spindle on the spare bike and nearly sent me back to the ground. Made it back to the pit and they took my pedal off my bike and sent me back on my way again. At that point I was seriously considering packing it in and saving it for the road race with all the sketchiness going on, but seemed like a long way to travel to pack it in so quickly... With about 6 laps to go there was a massive pile up on the back stretch that brought down a bunch of guys in front of me. The crash happened at the front and rippled back bringing a bunch of guys to the ground. I was too close to stop in time and aimed right at the center of it so I couldn't maneuver around it. Went over the handle bars again and this time landed on my head and started to roll over onto my back when someone landed on top of me hyper extending my neck. I jumped up to get out of the road but quickly dropped back down to the road when I realized I couldn't hold my head up. After a few seconds I managed to crawl to the side of the road while dragging my bike behind me. Turned out I broke the neutral bike too... There were a lot of guys that would move into you before they had passed you, it seemed like they were basically giving you the option of crashing or slamming on your brakes to let them in which is dangerous for anyone behind you... After talking to some of the guys who went down it sounds like that is probably what happened. After spending some time at the first aid tent, they decided I wasn't stable enough to make my own way to the hospital and called and ambulance... I hung out in the ER till about 1am waiting for some news that I hadn't done any damage to any vertabrae... Everything looked good and it looks like I just hyperextended my neck straining all the muscles in the back of my neck. Basically, I have little use of the muscles in the back of my neck and will probably be in a neck brace for the next week... The good news is I should be able to race again in a few weeks, just not getting my chance at the nationals road race...

Been a rough season with obstacle after obstacle, each one getting a little harder than the last... Hopefully I can keep this up and continue racing long enough to get through this bad patch... I really need a little silver lining about now...

J signing off...