Meat, Coco and I met at the crit course tonight to spin around and loosen up for the weekend races. Everything was just fine until I stood up to accelerate. Here's where I get foggy, so the following is Meat recollection...
He says it looked like my chain popped of the big ring and I slipped the gear, causing me to eat a large ration of pavement. I'm guessing, from the nature of my wounds, that I went over the bars and landed on my left side...right in the middle of the front straight...at @ 22 mph. It was NOT a gradual stop.
An inventory of my injuries is as follows...
Three fingers and wrist, left forearm and elbow, left shoulder, left middle-back, left hip, left knee, left ankle and left shin all look like I was attacked by an angry cheese grated. My hip is SWOLLEN! My right knee must have hit the top tube, as it's really painful. My right elbow is ripped up as well. I also have a concussion and a cut on the back of my head from the helmet. My 4 week old Giro Atmos is destroyed. The back of it is smashed flat and shattered.
I'm missing about 30-40 minutes of time due to the impact to my head. I have zero recollection of the crash. I remember riding and the next thing was sitting on the bumper of the fire truck.
Coco called the H.O. to come get me. The time that passed was probably 20 minutes, but in my concussed little brain, it was the blink of an eye.
She called Langston and he, in turn, called Providence to tell them we were inbound. I got right in and promptly went to CT and Xray. Fortunately, nothing is broken or lacerated/ruptured. They gave me some reaaalllly nice IV pain meds and scrubbed out my wounds.
Needless to say, I won't be racing this weekend. Charleston is up in the air...for now.
The Ridley is missing some clearcoat on the seatstay. The brand new D/A shifters I just installed are fraked. My brand new ROL Race SL wheels (first ride on them!!!) both have a bit of character. I'll give the bike a proper inspection tomorrow. Hopefully, there's nothing serious wrong with it. I needed new bars anyway, so those will be ordered soon. Uncle Shrews will get my wheels on Monday.
Right now, I'm pretty fuzzy. I don't know if it's my body responding to the injuries or the meds...likely a bit of both.
Thanks to Meat and Coco for making sure I wasn't injured further. Thanks to the firefighters for helping to patch me up. Special big thanks to Lang, who wasn't working, but called the ER to tell them I was coming. The folks at Providence are first class. They took me in, assessed me and patched me up...all with speed and smiles.
I'm getting sleepy...I'll update tomorrow. Good luck to my team-mates in Rock Hill this weekend. Hopefully, I've taken up all of the bad/crash karma for everyone for a while.
Crashing sucks!
3 comments:
That blows. Sorry to hear it. Same exact thing happened to me in 8/06 when I was practicing 53x12 sprints. Chain came off big ring @ 28 mph and down I went hard. Nothing like ringing your bell good huh? Hope you feel better. Let me know if you are crazy enough to go to Chas.
O'Grady, Armstrong, Cancellara, Farrar.... Whats up with all the big guns going down this season. Heal quick Brother
Heard about the wreck from Sam at the race...sounded like u ate it pretty good. Couldn't have prevented that one...get better man.
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