It has been a busy few weeks for sure. A few weeks ago while commuting home on Friday, I had an unfortunate event occur...yep, a bike commuter crash. I cracked the top tube of my Specialized SL carbon frame, bike frame destroyed. Without going into all the details since it's hard to explain, I'll just say that riding on the trails is dangerous. My accident occurred down by the airport where the trails merge near Crystal City. Fellow commuter came out of nowhere merging on. Luckily, we just barely avoided a head on collision, but I still went down after clipping his mtb handlebars. I thought everything was fine until I saw the cracked top tube...I cried inside. I loved that frame. It made it through 2 years of racing, yet, gets taken out and shot during an easy commute home...sad. BUT, the gentleman involved offered to help me cover the cost of replacement. I'll be honest, I was astonished. I never really lost my cool during the whole ordeal b/c I think I was mostly distraught over the frame. Neither of us were critically injured, I just had some scrapes and nicks. I gave him my card and said to email me if he was serious. I then proceeded to go 3 mph home on a nearly cracked in half top tube. So, Saturday I get an email from him. He feels terrible about the accident. We go back and forth and agree on a figure. Next thing I know on Monday morning a money order shows for twice as much as I expected, yet it will cover the cost for me to get a new frame, not exactly a true replacement, but good enough. Frankly, I was shocked, thankful and relieved by this. There are good people out there who are true to their word...faith in humanity restored.
Thankfully, teammate Brian is able to help me get my PCs off my training bike and get some regular cranks on it so I could hit a hard final week of training before some recovery. The plan was to take THUR thru SUN to get some good rides in.
Teammate Sunny met me THUR for one of the Haymarket loops. 70 miles, some gravel, 5k of climbing and wind. It was a great start to my mini-camp. Hit almost 3 hrs on FRI with some teammates, not too crazy, worked on some sprints. Then headed up to Frederick on SAT for a team ride. We had a shitty start to the ride when Brian got taken down by a car 10 mins into the ride. Out of towner decided to abruptly make a left turn on a 2 lane one-way street from the right lane. I was in the back of the bunch and watched the whole thing unfold in horror. Thankfully, Brian is ok, but his front wheel was taco'd and his bike un-rideable...needless to say he had a big headache. So, we get Brian in the police car and he gets take back to his car, the group pushes on. LOTS of climbing for sure. Legs came around and I was putting in some good work. I think we ended up with a little over 4 hours and then ended up eating some awesome Mexican food with Margies. SUN was a pretty free day. If I felt good, I'd do something hard. If not, I'd ride recovery for a few hours. Once I hopped on the rollers, everything came to life. Knocked out a hard 60min tempo effort at 325w avg after warmup and called it a day. Things are coming together. Getting amped about the team and our chances to do really well this year. Now I just hope my race frame comes in soon so I don't have to ride this boat anchor! It's looking more and more like Jeff Cup will be my first race...Battenkill is nearing.
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