second post in two consecutive days!!

Can you believe that I am posting two consecutive days‽ <-- haha I love that!!
 I can't believe it either!!

So my day today consisted of 

1. Riding in the car (thanks for the ride Paul!)
2. eating
3. racing

yeah.  It was fine, the drive was nice, but the race sucked :/  

We got to the race in plenty of time to warm up and stuff, so that was good.  It was a two hour drive to get there!  I got registered and they gave me this cool little timing chip to wear around my ankle, it was so neat!  I think cycling is behind the curve on this, because I know running races have it all the time, but not many of my bike races have them... but anyway, the weather was fine and I got warmed up nice and stuff.  


Then the race started and everything went downhill :(


I got a bad position on the line.  There were probably about 80 people because it was a combined cat 4&5 race (I am a 4 and the lower the number the better, 5 being the lowest).  I got started about mid pack or so then after the first turn the whole front of the pack slams on their brakes!  Huge bike racing etiquette nono right there!  when you want to slow down just pull off the front of the pack don't hit your brakes gosh!!  So whatever, I sat in and what do you know... it happened again!!  And when I say slam I mean it!  I about crashed into the guy in front of me and I smelt burning brake pads - it was serious.  But there wasn't a crash or a turn or anything!  They were braking for NOTHING!!  These were some really inexperienced riders (we call them squirrelly in bike lingo)  Then I slowed down and left some room between me and the pack until I could get to the front of the group after the first lap or so.  I tried to avoid what I like to call "the accordion effect"     then...

Hello asthma :(  How nice of you to join me!  Right about this time I started to feel my chest tighten up.  Great.  Fabulous.  Wonderful!!  So I went around one more lap to see if it would go away so that I could at least finish the race.  No go.  It only got worse throughout the lap :(  Then I was going around a corner and I see a couple of bikes off of the road.  I figure that he may have had a flat or something.  It was a crash!  I knew this would happen with such a squirrelly group!  How awful!  I just continued on though because there were people there helping him already.  I ended up pulling off after 2 out of the 5 laps because of my stupid asthma.  Crap :/

So that was my race.  4 hours round trip in the car for this :/  But I have found a positive in all of this!  I am racing next weekend and I am going to be sure to get a better starting position at the line.  That will make a huge difference!!  And another HUGE positive:  I am safe.  The most important thing :)

So, some details on the crash shall we? His bike was trashed!  He said the day probably cost him $2,000 in parts!!  His handlebars were made of carbon fibre and were completely ripped apart.  They looked like straw or something and you could just bend them around.  He also broke his brand new shifter.  Then his wheel got broken, which was a brand new zipp (read: $1000) and he was really upset.  I felt sorry for the guy because there was nothing he could do to avoid it, the guy just went down right in front of him :/  He wasn't too hurt though, just some pretty bad road rash...

I will talk to you all tomorrow!  I am going to help my sister move some furniture up to her new house on campus :)

Enjoy your day tomorrow!!  Make the best of it :]

Scott