Allegheny Jet

Sorry to read that you crashed AZTR. Hope you are OK. Is your frame toasted?

AzTallRider

I don't know enough about CF damage to know if someone like Calfee can repair the frame, so I'll call them. TT is cracked just forward of the ST. I may choose to put together a crit-oriented bike, and have the Madone repaired for training and longer races. issues are the usual ones for me: limited options with the needed stack and reach.

Just did an hour plus with Sara and Ex, to see if I could. I did.

VanceMac

Local guy (Predator) also does top carbon repair, if interested. https://predatorcycling.com/carbon-fiber-repair/

sarals 

Big John, I'm sorry, too! I did get meet AzT, Cleave, and of course Ex. I missed VanceMac.

Hey, I'm nothing special - poor climber, pretty slow on the flats, and an annoying wheel sucker.

After AzT crashed, I pulled out of the W 3/4 race to get him back to Ex's place for some R&R. I was really sorry to see that happen, but I am so glad it wasn't worse. Ex did ride with me around the course (backwards) so I could get a feel for it. That was nice of him, and even nicer that he did some coaching along the way. My highpoint of the day was locking Ex's van and running off with the keys - he couldn't get his water bottles. I found him just before his and AzT's race went off and set a sprint record getting to the van and getting his water bottles to him. All this happened after he told me "don't lock the van". Of course I did! Race nerves.

Today Ex and I raced the Oak Hills time trail. It was my first ever time trial, and it was done on a fairly beat up road into a strong headwind on the outbound leg. I hung on to every piece of advice Ex gave me before the start - stay aero, stay steady, don't go out too fast, stay within your power range. Well, my PT hub stopped working during the warmup (I think the batteries died), and then I did go out a little hard because I was using PE only. The outbound leg was a false flat, advertised as 4 - 5%, and perhaps it was. The killer, for me, was the 25 MPH headwind, and it was a COLD wind! I stayed in the drops (I rode my Look 566), concentrated on being steady, and tried hard to ignore how much it hurt. In the end, I rode a 29:31, and because I was the only woman - I medaled! Oh - I got to experience "track hack" afterwards, too!

My first. Probably ONLY!

It was a great weekend of riding, in spite of AzT's crash. After the TT, the three of us went out and covered a good part of one of Ex's training routes, which included climbing the lower flanks of Baldy. My legs were a bit tight, but they started working and I managed the last part of the climb above an embarrassingly slow speed. The descent was a blast. There is a roller near the bottom that Ex said he likes to hit hard, because it's "like the sprint at the end of a crit". I hit it as hard as I could, too, and did okay on it. AzT was amazing. He was aboard his TT bike, and he motored up those grades like they were nothing. Plus, he did that the day after a really nasty crash.

After that it was Mexican Food for lunch, along with some great, great stories from those two about their diving adventures. They're two pretty special guys, as well as being very gifted bike racers.

What a weekend!

shovelhd

Congratulations on the medal, Sara.

sarals 

Thank you, Shovel!

Hermes

Sorry to read about the crash, AZT. Heal up fast.

Sara, nice work on the ITT.

Cleave, you did well in the crits last weekend. Let the road race go. It was a training ride.

Allegheny Jet

Congratulations on grabbing hardware Sara!

sarals 

Thanks, everyone! I owe IT ALL to Ex!

revchuck 

Sara - I'm calling BS on the "only" part!

sarals 

Okay. Maybe one more. If no other woman shows up for that race, too.

Racer Ex 

I ended up 2nd in the 45+ for the TT, 2nd fastests master. I Merckx'd it on the Fuji, still waiting on the battery from Calfee for the Shiv. Not a great Merckx course, probably cost me a minute and a half vs. the TT bike. Still would have been 2nd most likely.

Really flippin tired tonight. Great company over the weekend, bummed about AzT's mishap (but glad he's in one piece) and happy for Sara.

Cleave

sarals, great job and keep training and keep racing. Part of winning is being there. As I've mentioned, I have a 70+ woman teammate who keeps winning national championship medals because she trains and races. If you don't race, you can't win.

So if Racer Ex, was the 2nd fastest Master, then he beat a lot of people with TT bikes.

Piru TT next Sunday for me since I need to race my Shiv at least once before Valley of the Sun Stage Race. Hope AzTR finds the wherewithal to be there too.

sarals 

Cleave, I hear you and I plan to do exactly that!

Everyone, if you haven't seen Ex ride or been on or in a ride with him, well! He is strong, savvy, and just plain fast. He pushed me up a frikkin' climb yesterday because I was going off the back, and that was AFTER his TT. I'm certainly no comparison, but he bettered my time over that TT course by 12 minutes. On his road bike! He is an exceptional athlete. He's a great host, too! We had a terrific weekend, the three of us.

chasm54

Well done Sara. Tough, AzT. Ex, if you feel like coming over to Europe and pushing me round any of my local races, I can offer free accommodation.

VanceMac

Hard man:

sarals 

Yeup, that was AzT. I saw him coming the OTHER way, and he looked even worse. I felt awful for him. It's too bad the photo doesn't show his helmet. The back of it was SHATTERED, meaning, it did it's job. As he said to me yesterday, if he hadn't fallen on his back it would have likely been a collarbone break. All in all, AzT came out remarkably well - it was a pretty serious crash.

sarals 

Here's AzT and Ex getting ready for the start of THAT race...



Look for "101" - that's Ex. AzT is next to him...

Cleave

Kristy must have taken that photo of AzTR while I was riding on the opposite side of the road. I was rolling (dragging) the remnants of his bike and I didn't want to completely block the lane in which he was walking as the road was still open to traffic. Racer Ex took the bike from me and I switched sides of the road because I always worry about friends who crash and break their helmets.

As I told AzTR, more than once I've had friends who say they are OK after that kind of helmet damage who later say they don't remember anything about our ride home or their ride in the ambulance. Very glad that AzTR DIDN'T have that kind of outcome.

sarals 

Amen!

sarals 

Not that it matters, but I now have the CORRECT time for my ITT - 27:53. Not stellar, but enough, I guess.

AzTallRider

Went to the doc... got x-rays and after the technician started doing extra films after the planned two, he said "You've probably realized by now that something isn't quite right." A couple of damaged ribs - getting an MRI tomorrow to see if anything punctured my lung, not that there is any real treatment for either of those. Turns out the frame is toast: Top tube, both chain stays and seat stay all broken. As they said in the shop... this had to be a really hard hit. Um... yeah. Doc says to manage pain, because otherwise I won't breathe deeply and that's not good for the lungs. So I'm going to take pain med's enough to keep things as normal as possible.

At this point, especially when I look at the bike, I feel really lucky to have walked away. Hell of a lesson on decision making, too. Glad the skills of those in the pack kept everyone up, or I'd feel a lot worse about it.

shovelhd

At some point I'd like to hear your perspective of what exactly happened. But now is the time to heal up and rest a bit. You'll be back on the trainer soon enough. Good luck with the MRI. I hope it is negative.

nacler22

AzT,

Damn, glad you walked away from your unplanned dismount. Hope the MRI is negative and you can get back to racing soon. For what it's worth, I have a 2011 Madone SSL in 62cm/H2. I was going to use to use it as rain bike this winter, but if you need a temp. bike until you get things sorted-out, PM me. I've got some bud's going down to Phoenix for training nx month, and there should be room for a frameset in the van. When you get a new bike, it'll only cost about $50 bucks to ship back home.

Heal up quick, and maybe give the HTFU a short reprieve.

Bill

AzTallRider

Here is what I think happened, and why, based on my experience, and subsequent discussions with Ex, who was back further in the pack, but who knows the group well.

We had gone through the mad post-turn dash previously mentioned, where we were hitting 32-33mph up a false flat. That didn't send people OTB, but it did stretch things out some, and as it slowed a bit, I drafted a guy going up the outside and got up into the first 10-15 riders without really seeing the wind. Things were tight due to there being a big field and a single (rural sized) lane, but they were sane, and I felt good. FWIW, our crit's here get that tight and fast, but our RR's generally don't. We here in AZ recognize that racing in SoCal is 'different'. Anyway, we went through the hard burst I mentioned that had me pushing 450w, but then it slowed a bit briefly, I think because the climb was coming up, and everyone wanted to be fresh for that. So at that point I had been stretched, but had handled it. It was like a big warmup, a check to get rid of anyone without legs, and now we were ready for the main event. It was pretty clear that the climbs would be the determining factor. The climbs and maybe the wind. So when the pace started to accelerate as we headed toward the climb, I knew I did not want to drift to the back of the pack. Big guys need to be able to drift back during the climb itself and stay attached.

As we accelerated, things of course stretched and thinned, with some gaps forming, as not everyone was responding immediately to the acceleration. It had that "might be an attack" feel. There was one guy to my left, and then the yellow line. Ahead of me, there was a guy on the yellow line, and a guy to his right, but there was room between them, and the guy to the right seemed to be fading. So I started moving into that space. The guy drifted left, into my wheel. I managed to break that contact, but I think I bounced off the guy to my left and then reengaged, probably with the same wheel, as the guy slowed. Somehow I broke free of that, and for a fraction of a second, thought I'd stay up, as I saw a clear path to the shoulder. But my front wheel wasn't pointed the direction I was going. I went over the left side, but still with my hands in the drops and clipped in. I flipped enough to land on the left side of my back, and my head. Small rash on left hand that exactly matches where my bars are ground down, so I know my hands were still on the bars. Being clipped kept my lower half from rotating as much, so my butt and hip hit more on the side than my back did. I ended up with my upper body on the shoulder, and my legs in the road.

It was a conscious decision on my part to push into a pretty tight space. It was "do I go, or do I ease off?", and I decided to go. But I didn't go that strongly, and that meant the guy ahead had time to drift over, not realizing I was moving into the spot. Had I been more definitive, I would have established my position, and believe he would have held his. So I made an aggressive move, but did it half-assed, and that was a bad combination.

It's frankly hard to distinguish between what I clearly remember, and what I might be filling in because I think it happened. This couldn't have taken more than 2-3 seconds from start to end. What's clear is that I effed up, and I'm trying to get as clear an understanding as possible, so I learn as much as I can from it. Wish there was video.