Heartbreak in Fort Collins

Well, first I'd like to thank everyone for all the good lucks!  It's cool to think that many people are pullin for me.  Thanks.

So... here's the story.

Normal pre-race stuff... nervous, lots of bathroom visits, and trying to get nice and warmed up.  The weather today was considerable different than yesterday.  The wind was insane!  It was way worse than Army's circuit race.  I figured it wouldn't make a difference being there was such a large field to hide in.   I heard the Men's D 1 field hit 130 riders!  

Something cool

They called a rider from every school to the front of the field.  For all the teams that had multiple riders they had to pick one guy but I was the only guy from Pitt I got to go up.  Sweet.

The race took off from the gun.  About two miles in the road went from 4 lanes to 2 and the field got sorta squashed and someone went down and ended up crashing out a good chunk of riders.  I was one of them.  I bounced my head of the pavement a couple times and tore up my right shoulder, hip, elbow and ankle (my hip hurts the most).  I immediately jumped up and grabbed my bike but nothing was working.  The Shimano guys tried to fix it but it was all f'ed up and they gave me a full Dura-ace super bike.  This bike was awesome!  Unfortunately it took about five minutes for them to get me set up.  The USA Cycling vehicle let me draft until we caught the popped riders.  I never caught field.  I road the rest of the 60 miles with Chet, a rider from Nebraska who also got tangled up in the crash.  I figured the best way to represent the ECCC, Pitt and all the people that were cheering me on would be to finish it out.  So I road the whole course.  Sucks because I think they are still going to give me a DNF because I didn't get to cross the finish line because they were starting the D2 race.  

Got my bike back -

Broken front wheel, saddle, and screwed up the brake caliper.  Also broke my helmet.  More money, more money.... Ugh.

Outlook for tomorrow

I'm feeling okay now.  Sorta stiff.  I've never hit the pavement before so I'm not sure how I will feel in the morning.  I'm going to try and get the Dura-Ace super bike again.

I'm pretty disappointed.  Hopefully, I will have a better day tomorrow.

bummed out,

BoB

Oh, yeah... something sorta cool -  ECCC won 3 out of the 4 races today.  It's cool to know that we race in the best Cycling conference!