Tour of Austin Day Two

My tour of Austin Day Two was actually the third day of the tour. It was also very stressful.

The course was pretty dicey to begin with. There was a huge corner that had a 130 degree turn and lots of bumps and pot holes. I felt excited and anxoius at the start of the race. I was also happy that my parents and my dog shadow came down from Dallas to watch. In the starting laps I was cornering strong and really happy to be out racing.

There was one section that narrowed extremely fast. On the first lap, people were crowding in around and bumping shoulders because the course went from 20 riders to 10 riders wide. On the second lap, I suppose there was just not enough room for everybody, and I heard a loud "WHOA!" and people started going down around me. By a stroke of luck, I did not go down. Unfortunately, Jacob, one of my teammates and fellow bloggers, went down in the crash.

He ended up being hurt pretty bad. Right at the crash, there were some dumpsters sitting next to the course. Jacob tried to move the dumpsters out of the way with his head. As I watched him, I couldn't help but be frightened for him and started praying that God would protect him and help the medics do a good job. The medics did a great job of stabilizing his head and asking him questions about where he was. Class act. Jacob was responsive to questions that were asked of him. They quickly took him to the hospital to get a CT scan. As he was put in the ambulance, he gave us a horns up!

We lined up to start racing again, and everyone was really supportive of our team and was really nice. I am always amazed at how supportive all the racers are. We really take care of our own. I was really worried about Jacob, and got really jittery, going around the sharp corners slower with less confidence. I was soon dropped. I just didn't feel like racing after that hard crash.

Jacob ended up being fine. I went to go visit him at the hospital about two hours after the crash, and he was already discharged. I was very thankful! Overall, the Tour of Austin, as Joey put it, was the Tour of Suck. Now it is on to mountain bike racing for the rest of the fall and looking toward road racing in January.

After the race, my mom, dad, and I went to Wich Wich to grab a sandwich and talk about life. It was good to catch up with them, as I did not spend many days in Garland after I came back from Alaska.

The rest of the week will be spent riding mountain bike and swimming at Gregory Gym. Oh yeah, and school.....