This year it was at the Manda Road Race. After placing 8th the day before I was feeling like the world was mine to take. I could win if I wanted. I could take the race by storm. My confidence was sky high. I suppose the cycling Gods chose to humble me in the bloody kind of way.
At the start of the race, these Gods were already mad. The biggest and most evil of the cycling Gods is Wind. He frequently rears his ugly head in Texas road races and tends to get angrier and stronger as races progress. Sunday was no exception. The wind was blowing worse than I have ever seen (well, felt) it. I'm going out on a limb and say it was blowing at least 200 mph. Maybe a little less, I don't want to over-exaggerate.
We started in a gargantuan echelon across the road, and I tried to protect my teammates as much as I could. After the first full lap we started back in the cross wind, and I was in a sheltered position near the edge of the road. All of a sudden, a new cycling God wanted in on the slaughter. The crack. A huge crack suddenly opened up in front of me, and my tire thought it would be fun to play in the bottom of it. Not so fun for my skin. I went down hard on pavement. I did not keep the rubber side down. I took two people with me.
I had to pull rocks out of my skin, and I completely destroyed my bibs (they look like Texas Tech bibs now). Needless to say I learned my lesson the hard way from the cycling Gods. I was humbled. At least until the next time I win a race.
What is most important is that I was up racing again four days later at the Driveway, and did reasonably well. The hardest thing to get over in crashes is not really the physical ailments and road rash, but the mental recovery. It's hard to not be twitchy. But so far I'm doing a good job. Hopefully I'm done crashing for a bit.
