Welcome to the Club

My friend Mike L. from the Windy City told me this on twitter "woah dude. glad you're okay. there's two types of cyclists: those who have crashed, and those who will. welcome to the club" This comment was made in response to the fact that my buddy Corona and I crashed and burned for the first time today. Let me re-phrase that, we both completely and absolutely performed a picture perfect Yardsale across some train tracks by Jamesville Beach in Syracuse, (aka the transition location for the Syracuse 70.3 that is coming in September). Here's the aftermath on my side. Its remarkable that only the bike lever broke off the bike and that I only have a bruised elbow, it really could have been way worse.




This accident happened at about the 5hr mark of our ride that was originally planned to be 6 hours. So on the bright side, even though we crashed and had to call it a day, we at least got a good solid 5 hours in! And my original training had been scheduled for 5 hrs, so I was right on target! Haha, you've got to find the good in everything.

But yeah, the crash happened right at the beginning of the homestretch. We had just hit about mile 86 or roundabouts and we were headed for home after completing the Syracuse 70.3 loop. We were hitting our tempo power zones (meaning that we were starting to really push the pedals down for the last stretch home). Mike was leading the way on this course and had ridden it multiple times and did the exact same course the week before. As he approached these train tracks he slowed down a bit and got ready to absorb the bump that always come when crossing train tracks, something that usually always works over these. Well this time we didn't have the best of luck, Mike's tire caught the track and turned his front tire immediately to the right and launched him. Brakes don't exactly work as they should on bikes in wet conditions so when I hit the brakes and tried to avoid Mike's heap I to when down in a flame of glory. Mike even said that he saw my face both before I commenced my launch and during. It would have been so funny (weird) to come upon the aftermath of this. Just picture to mean sprawled out in the middle of the road, across train tracks just rolling around checking their bodies to see if they were all in one piece and then doing the same for their bikes. Thankfully though a nice guy in a white pickup truck stopped and gave us a ride home..super cool of him. He turned out to be a rich dude who build housing complexes near where Mike lived, and happened to be headed that way to check on them. You wouldn't know it by the old 4x4 he drove that he was this well of dude but when he dropped his dog off at his house before taking us back to Mike's, we were treated to seeing his Mansion size home. I guess the rich are rich for a reason because on the way back to Mike's he did try to sell me a house. Unfortunately I told him that I would be emptying my piggy bank to fix my bike and that a house wasn't quite in the budget yet. The funniest part of the ride home was that he had this crazy doverman pincher dog, scared the daylights out of me (I mean the things was huge, and mean looking!) ....and it made Mike sneeze like 15 times on the ride home. Mike didn't have the heart to tell the guy that he was allergic to dogs, something I found out when we got back to his house, although I did have quite an inclination that this was the case after his 10th sneeze within mmm....18 seconds of being in the truck. Priceless.