Friday, July 20, 2007

2005 - The Year I Hit the Log

At Johnstown on Tuesday I ran over a log that flipped up and whaled me in the knee, destroyed my rear wheel, and caused me to slam my hand on the bar. The log was caught in my bike for a while, dragging, but somehow I didn’t cause a major crash. It was one of those times when people commend you for not crashing. I had that exhilaration that comes with sudden crashing pain and narrow avoidance of something far worse, got a wheel change and caught back on, but had messed up the bike to the point I ended up getting a neutral bike. It was Campy and my thumb (which turned out to be broken) hurt a lot so I could barely shift. Besides the log incident, which kind of shaped the week, I made a lot of attacks (many of them stupid, but they probably helped somewhat in springing breaks, which was the point), Meredith Miller made a good break at Hollidaysburg and got 4th (and went for a ride in our host's British sports car), Liza made the break at Martinsburg, Elisa played the piano (and raced well), we spent time in the host’s amenity-laden tour bus, Kristen and Katie each had some great climbing days, and Mackenzie drank mass quantities of Carb Pro-Optimizer and made me laugh a lot. We embraced the ice bath recovery strategy, one of those masochistic musts of stage racing. We continued to try to give away mass quantities of tea, usually passing on the "Tea can do that" slogan.

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