Surviving the Hood

The last two days didn't go quite how I'd hoped. Yesterday's stage went well until about 5 miles to go, when I missed a split (i.e., I got dropped) and the two most dangerous guys behind me in the GC didn't. I ended up losing 2:27 and dropping into 3rd overall. It was a weird day. I was pretty depressed afterward, but I soon realized that but for losing the lead, I would have probably been happy with how the day went. And since I never expected to be in the lead, I shouldn't get too worried about losing the lead and dropping to "only" 3rd. Hell, before the race I debated posting a goal of top 5 here, but I was worried that was out of reach, so I didn't.

So I entered the crit today in 3rd, with a 2 second gap on 4th. My plan was to stay near the front, hope for a split, and maybe lap the field and pick up a minute or two. The pace was brutal, but the field never split and nothing got away. With about 15 minutes to go, I saw the kid in 2nd and realized that I'd stay in 3rd. But I was feeling pretty good and hoped to pull off another win. It was a good course for me, fairly technical with an uphill finish.

Except I never made it to the finish.

With about 5 laps to go, I entered the crazy, off camber hairpin in pretty good position, but two or three guys took it too wide and hit the hay bales. I'm not entirely sure what happened next, but I think the guys outside of me swerved to avoid them and knocked me down. The first guy to hit me kind of bounced me, then another guy must have hit him, because I went down pretty fast. I didn't hit too hard, but the rest of the field ran me over and ground me into the pavement. I carried my bike down to the pit and the official told me that free laps were over and that I was done. I said, 'please tell me that I get the pack time,' and he said yes and that I should probably head to the medical tent.

So I 'finished' my first stage race while sitting in the medical tent. But 3rd overall is much more than I ever expected, and other than the $1k or so of damage to my bike, I'm really happy with how the race went. I'll definitely do this again.

Now I've just got to hope someone steals my bike out of my car tonight.