It puts the peroxide on it's skin

And man does it burn! I got some nasty road rash yesterday in the first of two races I was in. The first was a Category 3/4 Criterium that was a little “sketchy” from the get-go. I stayed up front for pretty much the whole race, and felt great! With three laps to go I was sitting about seventh or eighth wheel. With two laps to go, a couple of guys in front of me got together on the second to last turn and just kind of “filtered” into me. I hit the ground pretty hard, and at a nice fast pace. A guy I’ve been racing with since I started broke his nose and lost a tooth (Hope you’re doing better, Nick!). My rear wheel is bent possibly beyond repair, and my frame got scratched pretty bad, so it may be cracked. As for the rash, I dug a really nice place out of my left knee, which I guess is what took the most of the impact (explains the soreness, lol). I have a nice length of rash down my left shin, as well as some on my right shin and right elbow. It really was one of those wrecks where I should have broken a bone or something, but I came out with just rash! As soon as I stood up to grab my bike, some guy starts yelling at me that the crash was my fault, but he didn’t see the guy in front of me come next to me and take me down, so I yelled back, lol. I kept my cool in word choice due to the large tent of kiddy cyclists, but we both quickly calmed when I told him that and we apologized to each other (gotta love that adrenaline).

The second race was a 2/3 race, and I kinda felt doomed when I lined up. I wouldn’t say that I “idolize” category 2 racers, but most of these guys race with the pros on a regular, and a lot of them hang in there! I just felt that if anything, the race would definitely hurt, and I was right! I think my average wattage for the 3/4 race was in the neighborhood of 245 watts, when the 2/3 race was in the neighborhood of 270-275 watts! We averaged about 26.5 in the 3/4 race, and almost 27.5 in the 2/3! There was ANOTHER crash that I was involved in during this race, but it was unavoidable, and I went down in more of a stumbling fashion than a crashing one. It was about a 30-40 guy pile up right past the start/finish on one of the first laps. It’s really hard to stop a bike that’s going about 35/40 mph! I headed to the wheel pit for a lap and then hopped back in with about 20-30 other guys. I ended up finishing in the pack, as my mentality was to use this for training, and I didn’t feel like I would stand a chance in the sprint. Thank God I made it through the weekend with just a little rash, and also that this is a recovery week anyways!