Part two of Districts/Qualifiers was rolled into Friday Night Racing, which was kind of fun (I'd never done a Friday Night race before). I got there in time for a good warmup and got ready to race the keirin. I registered for all three races that evening - keirin, scratch, and points, and I was hoping to do best in the points race. The keirin had heats, reps, and a final. I placed 3rd in the heat, so I went to the rep. I'd gone too early and just narrowly missed 2nd. Between those races, Jose switched my gearing from a 90 to a 92 since I was spinning out a little bit. The rep went well - I won it. Then I had just the one mens rep before the final, so I stuck to the warmup circle to wait. The final started out fairly well, I got 4th wheel (out of 6 of us), and I was behind Beth Newell, who I figured would make a good move that I could follow.
Well, I was right about one thing - Beth did make a move, shortly after the motor pulled off. Unfortunately, the girls in front had slowed down when the motor pulled off, which meant that the space between the first few girls immediately disappeared, and the moment before Beth made her move, her wheel was just overlapped with Ruth's in front of her. Beth tried to move up track to make a move and instead she hit Ruth's wheel and went down immediately. There was no time to do anything (and I certainly don't blame Beth, it could have happened to any of us, it happened so quickly) so I plowed right into Beth's bike on the ground and flipped over, and the two girls behind me (Lala and Alissa) went down too. I separated from my bike right away and hit the ground, hitting my head (helmet) and knees before rolling over (and getting road rash all over the place). I remember screaming for a few moments from the shock of the pain, since road rash always hurts like heck for at least a few moments, not to mention my head hurt. Jose was by my side in seconds, having sprinted across the infield the moment he saw that I went down.
Once I got over the initial shock, I figured out pretty quickly that I'd been extremely lucky - nothing felt broken, though my head hurt a lot. I was soon informed (after being told to not move) that I had a big cut above my right eye, and apparently you could see a bit of my skull. A nurse named Kim Yglesias was by my side pretty quickly and helped put a bit of pressure on the cut to keep it from bleeding so badly (her daughter Christina was racing there that night). I saw a bunch of people walk up to me, glace at my cut, wince, and perhaps say something about that needing stitches. It was almost funny the way they did it. Because I'd hit my head, a bunch of people asked me questions to make sure I was still all there mentally - what day is it, do you know where you are, what's your name, etc. Then I think the ranger who showed up checked that I could still feel and wiggle my hands and feet. A few minutes later, the ambulance showed up and I got to answer all those questions again, along with questions about any medical history, drug allergies, etc. Because they were still concerned with the possibility of spinal/neck injury, they put a neck brace on me and strapped me to a board, which wasn't terribly comfortable but a good precaution. I'd heard that another girl was still down, but that neither of us was critical, so we went in the same ambulance. The other girl was Lala, who I don't think was bleeding as much as I was but was complaining about pain in her back, which was worrisome. Luckily the ambulance ride was fairly short, maybe 15 minutes or less, though poor Lala winced at every bump because of her back. Once we got there I didn't see her again, but I heard later that she'd broken her L1 and L2 vertebrae - ouch!
Once I was in the ER (they rushed us in since we were automatically classified as trauma patients due to the high velocity of our crash - around 30mph), I got asked a whole bunch of questions again then sent off to get a CAT scan to check for a concussion. Since I didn't lose consciousness, chances of a concussion were low, but it was good to check. The CAT scan came back clean, which was a relief. I couldn't remember when my last tetanus shot was, so I got another one just in case. I got a bunch of stitches put in my face - apparently there were 2 cuts, one bigger than the other. I think it was 12 stitches total. The shots for the anesthetic hurt a heck of a lot, but then it was all numb. Eventually the nurse cleaned up and bandaged all of my road rash and gave me some ibuprofen. Dan and Andi came to visit me and were relieved to find that I was doing pretty well. I managed to stay remarkably happy through the whole thing since I was just so thankful that I hadn't broken anything, it could have been so much worse. After signing some paperwork, I was finally free to go - it was around 11:30pm. After a half-hour drive home, I was really tired. Unfortunately, there was one more thing I had to do before I could finally go to sleep, and that was wash my hair - I found that there was a LOT of dried blood in it and it was very crunchy. Jose helped me rinse out my hair in the kitchen sink so we could use the sprayer to get my hair wet without wetting my face. I was so tired when I went to bed that even though lying down was painful (from the road rash), I got to sleep right away.
A big thank you to everyone who helped me through the crash: everyone at the track, the medics with the ambulance, all of the staff at the hospital, Dan and Andi for visiting me, and Jose for being there for me the whole time. I hope everyone else who crashed heals up quickly.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Elite Track District Championships and National Qualifier 8/22/2010
For the past five weeks or so I've been training for the Individual Pursuit, and finally I got to race one at Districts. My goal was to qualify for Nationals, so I brought along some friends to race to make the field size bigger (which means more people qualify). Thanks to Mary Ellen Allen, Mary Ann Levenson and Andi Smith for coming out and racing, we ended up with 12 people racing the pursuit! I had a good warmup and then I was on the start line. I had a decent start for once and I was off. My second lap was a little fast, 25.8 seconds, but then I settled into a fairly steady pace around 27 seconds per lap. My last couple of laps were a bit slower than the first couple, but not by a whole lot, so I ended up with a final time of 4:05.32, which is a bit faster than I expected to go on my very first pursuit. I'm really happy with my time, but it was a bit frustrating that Beth Newell only beat me by 0.8 seconds - so close. Congratulations to Beth for posting a great time and winning districts, I'm happy to have gotten 2nd place and qualified for Nationals.
After the individual pursuit, Andi and I wanted to do a team pursuit. We didn't have a third person, so we recruited Margaret Jones, who I met there that morning. Margaret had never been to the track before, but she did fine in the individual pursuit, so we decided we'd give the team pursuit a shot. We didn't even get to practice beforehand, but we figured out a strategy and away we went. Andi started, then Maggie, then me. Andi and Maggie each took half-lap pulls while I took full-lap pulls, since my time was a bit faster. We did pretty well actually, especially since we didn't practice and I know that Maggie and I have never done team pursuits before at all. We finished in second place with a time of 4:09.2, only 2.8 seconds behind the first place team. Since there were four teams, we actually qualified for Nationals!
After the individual pursuit, Andi and I wanted to do a team pursuit. We didn't have a third person, so we recruited Margaret Jones, who I met there that morning. Margaret had never been to the track before, but she did fine in the individual pursuit, so we decided we'd give the team pursuit a shot. We didn't even get to practice beforehand, but we figured out a strategy and away we went. Andi started, then Maggie, then me. Andi and Maggie each took half-lap pulls while I took full-lap pulls, since my time was a bit faster. We did pretty well actually, especially since we didn't practice and I know that Maggie and I have never done team pursuits before at all. We finished in second place with a time of 4:09.2, only 2.8 seconds behind the first place team. Since there were four teams, we actually qualified for Nationals!
Dunnigan Hills Road Race 8/14/2010
Category: W1/2/3
Field Size: 32
Length: 86 miles
Place: 16th
The course was very flat, probably the flattest road race I've done here since Cantua Creek. I like flat races, but this one was a little on the long side too. When we finished, my clock said something around 4 hours. We did two long laps, and the first one was fairly relaxed, since most of the attacks that were made didn't seem serious so early on. A couple of times there were a couple of people up the road, but we never let them get too far away. About twenty miles in my lower back started aching, so after that I didn't do very much work bringing breaks back or attacking myself. I just settled in and tried to keep myself properly fed and hydrated so that I'd have something left for the sprint, since it looked like no breaks were going to stick anyway.
Before the race, we'd been warned by the race officials that the centerline rule was being strictly enforced and if you were caught advancing across the yellow line, you'd be DQ'ed. Well, our motor ref took this very seriously and over the course of the race he DQ'ed five people. After the first one, I realized just how strict he was being and took care to generally stay on the right side of the pack and move up on that side. Anyway, on the second lap there was a group of three off the front for a long time, but they were never that far ahead, we kept them in our sights, and finally they were reeled back in with maybe 10 miles to go. We were all together with about two miles to go, though people kept making moves to get near the front, when we were informed that the finish line had been moved an extra two miles up the road and that we'd only have a single lane for the sprint. That messed up my plan since we were supposed to have the full road for the last half mile, so I was hoping to be able to get to a better position at that point. However, we stayed single lane right to the finish and I didn't have the energy to stay at the front since everyone was trying to do that and the pack kept churning. As a result, I was stuck in the middle when the sprint finally came, though no one had much room to sprint anyway.
Also very cool was that my parents were in town for this race and both of them raced too! Mom was riding my commuter bike, which fit her ok with some adjustments, and Dad rode Jose's cross bike, which fit pretty well. Mom did the Womens 30+ race, all 42 miles of it. She had never raced before so she got dropped by the main group about 7 miles in, but rode most of the rest of race with another lady. Dad rode in the 45+ Cat 5 field and finished with the pack. He was disappointed that they didn't have the whole road to finish on because he didn't get to sprint and he wasn't tired at all. We all had fun racing and stopped for IHOP on the way back.
Field Size: 32
Length: 86 miles
Place: 16th
The course was very flat, probably the flattest road race I've done here since Cantua Creek. I like flat races, but this one was a little on the long side too. When we finished, my clock said something around 4 hours. We did two long laps, and the first one was fairly relaxed, since most of the attacks that were made didn't seem serious so early on. A couple of times there were a couple of people up the road, but we never let them get too far away. About twenty miles in my lower back started aching, so after that I didn't do very much work bringing breaks back or attacking myself. I just settled in and tried to keep myself properly fed and hydrated so that I'd have something left for the sprint, since it looked like no breaks were going to stick anyway.
Before the race, we'd been warned by the race officials that the centerline rule was being strictly enforced and if you were caught advancing across the yellow line, you'd be DQ'ed. Well, our motor ref took this very seriously and over the course of the race he DQ'ed five people. After the first one, I realized just how strict he was being and took care to generally stay on the right side of the pack and move up on that side. Anyway, on the second lap there was a group of three off the front for a long time, but they were never that far ahead, we kept them in our sights, and finally they were reeled back in with maybe 10 miles to go. We were all together with about two miles to go, though people kept making moves to get near the front, when we were informed that the finish line had been moved an extra two miles up the road and that we'd only have a single lane for the sprint. That messed up my plan since we were supposed to have the full road for the last half mile, so I was hoping to be able to get to a better position at that point. However, we stayed single lane right to the finish and I didn't have the energy to stay at the front since everyone was trying to do that and the pack kept churning. As a result, I was stuck in the middle when the sprint finally came, though no one had much room to sprint anyway.
Also very cool was that my parents were in town for this race and both of them raced too! Mom was riding my commuter bike, which fit her ok with some adjustments, and Dad rode Jose's cross bike, which fit pretty well. Mom did the Womens 30+ race, all 42 miles of it. She had never raced before so she got dropped by the main group about 7 miles in, but rode most of the rest of race with another lady. Dad rode in the 45+ Cat 5 field and finished with the pack. He was disappointed that they didn't have the whole road to finish on because he didn't get to sprint and he wasn't tired at all. We all had fun racing and stopped for IHOP on the way back.
Warnerville TT 8/7/2010
Category: W1/2/3
Length: ~22.5 miles
Field Size: 7
Place: 5th
It was nice out for the Warnerville TT, fairly warm and not too windy, though with a bit of a headwind on the way back. The course was very long - advertised as 20 miles, but really closer to 22.5. The way out was rolling but more downhill than up, so the way back was painful with the headwind added in. I was a bit tired coming into the race from a hard week of training, so I wasn't expecting to do very well, and I didn't. But that's okay, because it was great practice for me and good training too.
Length: ~22.5 miles
Field Size: 7
Place: 5th
It was nice out for the Warnerville TT, fairly warm and not too windy, though with a bit of a headwind on the way back. The course was very long - advertised as 20 miles, but really closer to 22.5. The way out was rolling but more downhill than up, so the way back was painful with the headwind added in. I was a bit tired coming into the race from a hard week of training, so I wasn't expecting to do very well, and I didn't. But that's okay, because it was great practice for me and good training too.
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