Carnage and the Wake Up Call

I cycled to work again this morning. Like yesterday the temperature was 58 degrees. How could I not ride? A benefit to riding is I get to add 7 miles in the morning to the 20-ish miles I tick off after work. Nice. Tomorrow my driver will expect an apology.

Yesterday it took me 66 minutes to ride home. Today I was feeling good and decided to try to do the same route five minutes faster. Half way home I went into a left turn too fast and too distracted. It's a complicated turn in that if you're riding fast you need to be looking ahead at what's coming up after the turn. Also, I had just finished waving at a guy I saw riding in a smiliar spot yesterday. He doesn't wave back...he has one arm. As I was turning and braking debris in the corner caused my rear wheel let go of the asphalt.



Here's the wreckage. You can see the skid mark beginning in the lower left of the picture and derbis is a little more obvious. Miraculously I have no road rash to show for it. My left foot unclipped from the pedal and tried to help the recovery which tweaked my knee some. I feels a bit swollen right now but only time will tell if there's damage. I was able to complete the ride, a bit slower.

I can't help but think how the crash might have looked if I had been on the road. As a result I'll be reconsidering some of my on road riding behavior over the next few days.



And because I'm a geek, here's what heart rate looks like during a ride like that. 25 minutes in the orange around 165 beats per minute which is right close to my lactate threshold. Then two minutes away from the heart rate monitor as I check my body and bike for injury, also known as "walking it off", right coach? And then a much more leisurely ride around 150 beats per minute except for some uphill sections.

Thanks for playing. Ride more safely than I did today.