Crash # 1 of the season

Today my scheduled workout was a 2 hour spin. When the workout says “90 min spin” or “2 hour spin” without any intervals, it’s a real struggle for me. So, today I said to hell with the bike trainer and I bundled up & headed outside.

I wore my long, fleece lined running tights, a long sleeve tech-tee, my running jacket, gloves & and ear warmers (smart move, I almost forgot them). Oh, I wore socks too. Might as well not have, my feet froze!

I started out on a paved trail near my house and that went ok for a little bit until the trail became kind of creepy and there was snow every so often that I’d have to get off & walk my bike through. The time I was on the trail I was going fairly slow. There were lots of curves in the trail and at one point I got to a part where there were about 4 or 5 right angle turns that I had to take fairly slow.

Once I got off the trail, my speed picked up quite a bit. I probably averaged about 17 mph. The bad thing? Even though my feet never got wet, they were FREEZING!!! But, I was so far in to my ride that it would have been pointless to turn back around, ya know?

Well, I was finally getting close to the 2 hour mark and I was about 10 minutes from home & I crashed my bike!!! It all happened so fast I’m not exactly sure what happened. I was on one of the busiest streets near my house and I was slowing down to come to a red light, and I think I hit like a little lip or something in the road and all of a sudden all I knew was I was flying!

“You can fly, you can fly, you can fly!”

All I heard was someone yelling from their car window “Are you ok?” Once I finally landed, I picked up my bike, happy to see that the handlebars hadn’t been mangled or anything bent, etc. I did notice my chain was off though. No biggie. I propped my bike up against a utility pole & got the chain back on track and then gained my composure so I could head home.

As I was getting ready to climb on my bike to head home, I looked down and there was just a ripped hole in my gloves I was wearing, but nothing else. My pants weren’t ripped or anything. So, I knew I was good. I looked at my brand new handlebar tape though, and promptly dropped the F bomb.

If this is the worst of the damage though, I’m happy!

At least I get to learn to put new handlebar tape on though. My coach said he’d show me how. I’m not paying someone to do it for me. I got on my bike and started pedaling and noticed that my front wheel is a little wobbly. I don’t know if something just needs to be tightened, or if I bent the wheel, or what. My dad is coming out tomorrow to look at it with me.

I got home in one piece and as I was getting ready to shower, I noticed this on my knees:

I’ve had much worse scrapes.

This is nothing compared to one of my crashes last year. I’m super grateful that I wasn’t hurt worse. If I wasn’t wearing my helmet, I can guarantee my bumps and bruises would be worse than that.

It seems like I end up crashing my bike at least once a year. I don’t know why, but I do. Hopefully with it just being February that means I’ve got it out of my system for the season.

Next week’s 3 hour spin ought to be interesting…

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