Elite Track District Championships and National Qualifier 8/27/2010

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.