Dead Man
05-07-2014, 01:03 AM
Better crashes have been posted, yes... but this is MY crash story, and it's really the only one I have (so far).
I've taken little sliders in tight corners, and other low-speed crashes, but I've never just full-on ate sheet at full speed before today. Looks like I threw the chain. I've been sporting a 12-28 for sake of our Portland hill country, but decided to stick that cassette on a different wheelset and go back to a 12-25 for my fast wheels. The whole 60 mile ride, I'd been meaning to stop and give the barrel adjuster just one more half twist to address a little lag in shifting on the new cassette.. but you know how it goes, I was just too busy killing it and fantasizing about all the new awards I was gonna get on this ride on Strava.. never did stop and fix it.
So there I was, burning down a segment I currently happen to hold KOM on... it's about a mile dash from the highway to an intersection by my neighborhood.. long, slightly downhill stretch that curves into a depression, then a short but nasty little hill sprint back up to the final straightaway to home. It's just steep enough that you gotta sprint or granny it out, but short enough that you can definitely sprint through it, even at mile 59 of a hard ass 60 mile ride. I was ripping around the curve at about 30mph, so I'd probably slowed to maybe 25-27 by the moment it happened. I popped off the saddle for the sprint up and decided at the last second to click down one cog........
Suddenly I'm leaning, my right hand is off the drop, I don't have control of the bike anymore... and am definitely going down. Fortunately there's a patch of grass off the shoulder and no culvert at that particular spot (there's culvert everywhere else except that one spot). So I lean hard to hit the grass instead of ditch on the asphalt, or the telephone poll, or the culvert, and BAM I hit the grass HARD, and continue to slide and bump and twist and flip, all tangled up in my bike, for like a freaken eternity. Probably all happened in 3 seconds, but it felt like minutes, just waiting to come to a stop.
Once I got to my feet I was happy that I seemed to be un-broken, if bloodied. I immediately noticed my chain was thrown, but I didn't know at that point what had made me eat it- a buddy helped me figure out the sequence of events later. I gave the front and back wheels a spin, expecting the flimsy race rims to be bent... nope! spun true, or true enough. My right shifter was all full of dirt and grass and my left shifter was bent all out of whack with a kinked housing, but the front der was still positioned over the big ring, so I didn't eff with it. Couldn't see any cracks or anything majorly mechanically wrong with it, so I just got back on and rode home!
My knees got all cut up and I've got some road (dirt) rash.. I'm sure I'll be stiff and bruised tomorrow. My helmet doesn't show any sign it hit the dirt, somehow... in all that smashing and tumbling around I somehow kept my head up? Weird.
Yea I'm fine... but emotionally, I feel like I might have Acute Stress Disorder, which will surely turn into PTSD and require a few years of therapy. My wife is going to divorce me because I'm a dick and my kids won't want to have anything to do with me. I'll end up in some studio apartment down town with impressionably young girlfriends and nothing to spend my money on but bike parts. If it wasn't for Strava, this wouldn't have happened! If it wasn't for Strava, I would have stopped and adjusted my rear der. If it wasn't for Strava, I wouldn't have been pushing it so hard to drive my time down and speed up for that segment, thereby protecting my KOM status.
My buddy is a lawyer. Gotta git paid, son.
I've taken little sliders in tight corners, and other low-speed crashes, but I've never just full-on ate sheet at full speed before today. Looks like I threw the chain. I've been sporting a 12-28 for sake of our Portland hill country, but decided to stick that cassette on a different wheelset and go back to a 12-25 for my fast wheels. The whole 60 mile ride, I'd been meaning to stop and give the barrel adjuster just one more half twist to address a little lag in shifting on the new cassette.. but you know how it goes, I was just too busy killing it and fantasizing about all the new awards I was gonna get on this ride on Strava.. never did stop and fix it.
So there I was, burning down a segment I currently happen to hold KOM on... it's about a mile dash from the highway to an intersection by my neighborhood.. long, slightly downhill stretch that curves into a depression, then a short but nasty little hill sprint back up to the final straightaway to home. It's just steep enough that you gotta sprint or granny it out, but short enough that you can definitely sprint through it, even at mile 59 of a hard ass 60 mile ride. I was ripping around the curve at about 30mph, so I'd probably slowed to maybe 25-27 by the moment it happened. I popped off the saddle for the sprint up and decided at the last second to click down one cog........
Suddenly I'm leaning, my right hand is off the drop, I don't have control of the bike anymore... and am definitely going down. Fortunately there's a patch of grass off the shoulder and no culvert at that particular spot (there's culvert everywhere else except that one spot). So I lean hard to hit the grass instead of ditch on the asphalt, or the telephone poll, or the culvert, and BAM I hit the grass HARD, and continue to slide and bump and twist and flip, all tangled up in my bike, for like a freaken eternity. Probably all happened in 3 seconds, but it felt like minutes, just waiting to come to a stop.
Once I got to my feet I was happy that I seemed to be un-broken, if bloodied. I immediately noticed my chain was thrown, but I didn't know at that point what had made me eat it- a buddy helped me figure out the sequence of events later. I gave the front and back wheels a spin, expecting the flimsy race rims to be bent... nope! spun true, or true enough. My right shifter was all full of dirt and grass and my left shifter was bent all out of whack with a kinked housing, but the front der was still positioned over the big ring, so I didn't eff with it. Couldn't see any cracks or anything majorly mechanically wrong with it, so I just got back on and rode home!
My knees got all cut up and I've got some road (dirt) rash.. I'm sure I'll be stiff and bruised tomorrow. My helmet doesn't show any sign it hit the dirt, somehow... in all that smashing and tumbling around I somehow kept my head up? Weird.
Yea I'm fine... but emotionally, I feel like I might have Acute Stress Disorder, which will surely turn into PTSD and require a few years of therapy. My wife is going to divorce me because I'm a dick and my kids won't want to have anything to do with me. I'll end up in some studio apartment down town with impressionably young girlfriends and nothing to spend my money on but bike parts. If it wasn't for Strava, this wouldn't have happened! If it wasn't for Strava, I would have stopped and adjusted my rear der. If it wasn't for Strava, I wouldn't have been pushing it so hard to drive my time down and speed up for that segment, thereby protecting my KOM status.
My buddy is a lawyer. Gotta git paid, son.