The last six weeks has been a perfect storm of destruction, managing to destroy the two most valuable things I own!
Last month I was T-Boned by an elderly driver who “didn’t see” the red light, the result was an irreparable car, but fortunately (for both of us) no injuries. Exactly one month later my new car (paid by his insurance) arrived, needless to say I’ve been driving slower than the average L-Plater the last few days.
I had been using my road-bike as my general mode of transport, it became my commuter to swimming, cafes and various appointments.
Understandably I did get some funny looks cycling around Canberra in skinny jeans and sneakers, one person went as far as to ask if I had stolen the bike (like I’d say yes, even if I did steal it).
One positive of the accident was that I was able to put in some decent hours on the bike. Yet this training load, let alone the added time it took to travel (getting ready to go cycling alone takes 15mins) had put a serious strain onto me, I was more physically tired, had less time to study (and see friends) and consequently slept less. My bike crash on June 14 (the day before my 21st birthday) was largely a result of being physically and mentally exhausted. When I skied seriously, it was always in the afternoon, when I was most tired, that I crashed.
The day before my crash was the biggest (in terms of mileage) day I’ve ever had in the pool, clocking up 9.6km, let alone I ran to swimming (another 10.5ks). The morning of my crash after our usual 2k’s worth of warmup/drills/IM work our coach sprung quite a nasty surprise onto us……a 2k time trial!! Needless to say I spent the next 20-odd minutes in a world of pain. It was from this session that I was cycling home. I was flying home to Melbourne that afternoon to spend my birthday with my family.
There is a nice 400m downhill section on one of the Canberra bikepaths (next to Scrivner damn for you locals) for the last few months I had been pushing harder and harder around it, it was by no means technical, but the leadup to it meant you needed to touch the breaks a little, the bike path was pretty narrow so there was not much margin for error.
I hit the corner at PB pace (48.6km/h is what my Garmin registered), but as soon as I started to round the corner I knew I was stuffed, my line was way to direct. The result was that I veered off the bike path and onto the gravel, there is a small 5cm drop from the pavement to the gravel and it was this drop which through me off my balance. The result was that I was flung hard to the ground on my left side and started an awkward tumble down the hill. Incredibly I was unhurt minus some lost ski on my hip and knee.
For some reason my worse crashes have always been at slow speed, I dislocated my collarbone and ruptured a few tendons around the shoulder at 15km/h two years ago, and cracked my helmet and gave myself a black eye rounding a corner at about the same pace a few months before that.
Once I knew I was unhurt my biggest worry became my prized-possesion: my bike. Lying on its right side all looked well…RELIEF. Then I turned it over and the prognosis was considerably less positive.
The photo doesn’t really do it justice, but I’d given my left shifter a decent pounding, taking a decent chunk out of it. The bars as well were broken. But my real concern was my chainstay.
As you can see from the photo I there were three clear cracks in the carbon fibre, moreover each one went all the way through the frame. In short the bike was a write-off, you can image how I felt!!
For a simple ‘fall on your side’ crash to sustain this damage would be very very unlikely, I think that the 5cm drop-off between path to gravel had something to do with the frame cracking, as it would take considerable impact to smash up the frame the way it did.
Hears hoping that I’ve used up all my bad luck for the next few months!!
