Around Brunner and........the crash....

So yep, my first crash on a road bike. We'll get to that later cos that happened near the end.

Brrr but Greymouth was cold!! It rained on and off all night before the race, I was thinking of not doing it if it was raining at the start, the thought of those huge bunches in the rain wasn't appealing. There was one quick shower after we got up and then it was nice and clear but very very cold!! It was freezing biking down to the start line, I was wearing a base layer top, cycle top, arm warmers, cycle shorts and knee warmers and it was soo cold!!! We sat on the start line for up to about 45mins, I was shivering big time by the time we started. I was pleased to finally get going but it took about half the starting chute before I could get my foot clipped in cos my feet were so cold. Need to take shoe covers there nezt year!

Race plan was pretty simple, real similar to last week, go hard from the start and give it heaps! There are no major hills in this race, it is just long, 130kms. The start was a bit interesting as bunches seemed to just keep flying past but I managed to get into a reasonable sized bunch on the outskirts of Greymouth and rode with some of those folk for pretty much the whole race. The railway bridge seemed to turn up pretty quick, thats an interesting part of the race as the bridge is for cars and trains so you have to avoid the railwasy tracks, the marshalls are good tho and you just have to choose one of 3 lines and stay in it and you will be fine, the surface is pretty rough tho. From there it was nice and undulating to Jacksons and the halfway point. My goal time was 4 hours, I did 4.31 last year so was planning to be a whole lot quicker but figured I could do it after improving so much in Graperide the week before. I got to the halfway point in 2 hours and 2 mins so was pretty much on target for 4 hours or thereabouts. I was a little worried about cramping for the first time ever, my right hamstring was feeling a little crampy at about the 50km mark so I was a little worried cos there was still a long way to go. It felt niggly pretty much the whole way but never seemed to get any worse so that was good. After the halfway point there are some nice long flat stretches of road and we had a few team riders join the bunch so their fresh legs were good for leading us out along the flats. There were a couple of interesting parts in this half, there were some road works going on and one of the smaller climbs was gravelly but had been well swept and wetted down so was ok to ride up, then around Moana there are a couple of bigger climbs. When I say bigger they are probably the biggest climbs in the race but are nothing like the hills around ChCh, they just feel a bit mean cos its 100kms in and you have been on your bike for 3 hours already. By the time we got to Stillwater I realised I wasn't quite going to make 4 hours but was going to come close at around 4.03-4.05. So with about 3-5km to go the worst possible thing happened and we had a huge bunch crash. I'm not 100% sure what happened as I was halfway down the bunch, apparently someone at the front sat up and looked around, the girl behind him clipped his wheel and came off, 2 others crashed really badly as well. The rest of us just tried to avoid them, I was about half-way down the right hand side and swerved out with everyone else and thought I was going to miss it but hadn't swerved enough and caught the wheel of the girl in front (ewww, you can see her tyre marks on my wheel!) and tumbled off. I pretty much hit everything on my right hand side, I think I did a full head over heels tumble but I'm not sure, my helmet took a good thump so I now have a very sore neck, sore shoulder, garcked up elbow, bruised hip and knees.My cycle kit is a bit scratched up but still wearable. My helmet is never going back on my head, I put new cleats on my shoes about 2 weeks ago and one of these snapped with the force that I came off my bike. My bike seems to be fairly ok, I definitely came off worse. She is in at the shop at the moment getting the once over, it appears to be mainly surface damage, scuffed saddle, rear derailleur, pedals, hood covers and stuff like that. Wheels are a little untrue and have one bent spoke but all easily fixable. Gee the things that run thru your head when you fall.....first it was phew I missed that, then when I started to fall it was oh f*ck!!, then oh no my bike!!! followed by, thank god for helmets as my head took a thump, then it was shit what happened. By the time I got off the road everyone was running around helping the hurt folk so I pulled bikes and stuff off the road so the next bunch didn't ride into them. The ambulance was there pretty quickly and another arrived soon after. 3 went to hospital, one was a lady I have known for about 16 years and hadn't seen in ages but she called out to me at Moana and I was looking forward to a catch up when we crossed the finish line. Once everything was under control I checked that my bike was rideable and headed to the finish with a couple of others. It was a pretty quiet solemn ride to the end, I just dawdled along in a real easy gear, my heart wasn't really in it now after what I had just seen. I've seen one of my finishing photos and I look pretty miserable so be gentle if you check out the pics. Total time was 4.16, I was 16th in my category, ride time on my bike computer was 4.07 so I was stopped for maybe 10mins. Afterwards a few people asked me if I knew what had happened so I told them what I knew from what others had told me, I gave a rather unfiltered version of events to one guy before realising he was the one that caused it.

I was feeling pretty bad about this yesterday when I was in a better state of mind and I don't think he had any idea what happened and he was pretty genuine in this and he was feeling bad that he hadn't stopped (it's hard to stop at the front tho without putting others at risk), I saw him later in the crowd and he looked pretty upset so I emailled the organisers this morning and explained what had happened and asked if they could forward on an apology from me which they have done. I was a bit of a mess when I crossed the line, the enormity of the whole thing hit me and I realised how lucky I was to have got off so lightly and I pretty much burst into tears and sat on the ground having a big cry. Huge thanks to Tanya and Nadia for looking after me while Geoff went and got the car so I didn't have to bike home. Tanya even managed to find a doctor to check me over to make sure I was ok while poor Nadia was looking after my bike and all my other stuff. Thanks ladies, you're awesome!! Geoff makes a good first aid person, after I showered he cleaned me up and bandaged my wounds, this made me cry again cos it hurt a lot!! So after prizegiving we headed out for dinner and I did the very mature thing of drinking lots of beer to make me feel better! It worked too, I felt great!! Now what?? Well I will definitely be back next year, its just one of those things that can happen to anyone anytime they get on their bike, thats life and a risk worth taking to do what you enjoy. For now tho I have 3 weeks off training, apparently its called an off-season, so hurting myself came at the right time cos I couldn't train now even if I wanted to!