The Crash

Here recounts the story of my big crash in the Deer Trail road race. Deer Trail is a classic Colorado road race. It's flat, windy, and my kind of race.
(not actually Deer Trail, but you get the idea, basically looks like Kansas)

I usually do pretty well in these kinds of races. I've finished on the podium in Deer Trail a few times, so I was pretty psyched for this race. Plus I was getting to race with my good buds Sharon and Beth. They're not racing crits this year because they're too dangerous with a high risk of crashing. Ironic.

So we raced around for a couple hours, blah, blah, blah. It was pretty much a race of attrition with the wind out there. By the time we came in to the final kilometer there were only 5 of us left. Me, my teammate Beth, two DFT gals, and one other person I didn't know. Going in to the sprint, Beth gave me the nod and told me she was going to lead me out. That put a lot of pressure on me because I'm convinced Beth can win any race she wants to (because she usually does.) So if she's leading you out, you better not screw it up.

Beth start going with about 3 or 400 meters to go, basically way far out. She went pretty hard but I was able to stay tucked right in on her left hip. There was a pretty strong cross wind, so staying in the draft was key. She turned to look back at the gap we had and we just got tangled up. I didn't expect her to look back and she didn't expect I was so close. It's nobody's fault, it's just one of those things that happens. I hit her back wheel with my front wheel pretty hard just couldn't save it. I hit the deck, and as I was going down I knew it was going to be bad. Plus I was pretty pissed because I was soooo going to win that sprint!

The good news is Beth didn't go down too; she actually won. Perhaps it was because I was sprawled in the middle of the road providing a good road block for the rest of the group, but hey a win's a win.

Stock photo of Beth winning, although to note, she said she didn't raise her hands in victory out of respect for her wounded teammate. She actually said that she contemplated stopping to see if I was ok, but kept sprinting because she knew I'd be more pissed if one of us didn't win. What a good teammate.

So I laid on the ground knowing I broke something. I knew other groups were coming in to the sprint, but I just couldn't get myself off the ground. The EMT helped me up eventually, and he asked if I wanted to go in the ambulance. Having been transported in the ambulance from a race before, I know how pricey that can be. Plus we were in the middle of BFE eastern Colorado and I wasn't actually dying, so we decided to drive me to the hospital in the Springs, 2 hours away.

I have to give a big thank you to Christina Moore. We drove out to the race together and she did a great job of taking care of me on the drive and making sure I got checked in to the hospital ok. I usually travel to races alone, so it was just good luck that she asked me to carpool to the race, and even better luck that she was willing to help me out so much.I don't really know how I survived the 2 hour drive or the 2+ hour wait in the ER before I saw a doctor and got good pain meds because this is what my elbow looked like. I broke off the olecranon process (tip of the elbow) when I hit the ground. Then as I was skidding across the pavement the olecranon got pushed out of the way and I just kept scraping down my ulna (lower arm bone) on the road. The doctor said the end of the ulna was real smooth after all that sanding down so the pins he put in to fix it all together fit in really flush to the bone. That's a bonus, I guess.

I also took some hunks of flesh out of my knee. You could see my inner fat from under the skin. It was kind of gross but didn't bother me at all because the pain in my elbow pain almost made me pass out a couple times.

Because it was an open fracture (broken bone through the skin) they had to do surgery right away. So I had surgery to screw it all together that night. I stayed in the hospital overnight to make sure everything was ok and to get plenty of IV antibiotics to flush out all the cow poop from the road in Deer Trail.
I got out of the hospital on Monday and went straight for an ice cream milk shake. Makes sense since with all this I'm not so worried about rehab and permanent damage to my arm, I'm just worried about becoming a big fattie with the time off the bike. So what better way to get a head start than a milk shake at Cy's.