First DNF
It was bound to happen.
I raced BikeJam yesterday in Baltimore, MD. Women's 3/4.
Fast, wide course. Only one really sketchy sharp left turn. Kinda crappy pavement, but not terrible.
My problems happened in turn 1 about half way through the race. It is just after a slight uphill, so the field has slowed down. The turn is wide and easy to the right. Beginning of a very wide S curve. A racer 2 "lanes" over to my left decides the turn a lot more sharply than anyone else and slams into the girl on my left. I react to get away from her, and lightly bump the person on my right. That bounces me back left a tad, because to stop the wobble, I stopped turning. That plus the force the rider to my left felt caused us to slam together anyway. Lots of further bumping bars, shoulders, hips, everything. Bump, straighten (but impossible to straighten up on the same line), bump again. The 2 to our sides had fallen back behind us some. Finally, it got to the point where front wheels were going to collide or I had to try to turn hard. I got upright, turned, and thought, "yes! I'm going to keep this upright!" as I finally wound up in the same line as the girl to my left. Then the person to my right/rear screamed. Then the "oh *****" moment as my tires started skidding out. Turns out the screamer hit me again as I was turning hard. I thought I went underneath the person on my left, but only the screamer and I wound up on the pavement (she was ok and got back in the race). I don't know it all happened exactly, but that's all I could piece together from my recollection and spectator comments. I landed smack on my helmet over my right ear and heard the crack. I sat up, saw that I was turned around backwards on the course, my bike in front of me. My head hurt like mad. I was really dizzy. I managed to get up and walk back to the start line, where the officials tried to convince me to take a free lap. Hell no. I took off my helmet and showed it to them. Yep, broken. The EMTs gave me 2 alcohol wipes and told me to try to get some ice from the vendors. I managed to find a sandwich bag full of ice from the VIP tent. Great.
The rest of me is doing ok. Somehow I wound up with a perfect greasy chain imprint on the outside of my left calf. Road rash on hip, but it's pretty mild. Very light scrape on ankle and elbow and shoulder/upper back. Swelling on hip and ankle. Today, my neck and shoulder muscles hurt like hell. At least that headache is gone. It lasted allll day yesterday.
Bike damage is pretty cosmetic. Bar tape shredded on right and bars scratched. Levers collected more scratches, some sharp. Pedal also has deep scratches. I don't remember looking at the RD. The weird thing is that the front rim is scraped badly on the left side, and the rear side of the fork just above the dropout has some deep scratches. I think it's just cosmetic, but it's definitely down to the carbon. So maybe I did go part way under the other bike. Headset is also crazy loose, but I've been having some issues with that with this frame (got it in March). I've already had to re-tighten it twice. It's at the shop to get the rim sanded and to get a general inspection.
I was going to race today, but oh well.
What kind of pisses me off the wost is that I didn't get a good look at the person who started the whole mess. I guess I'm glad that I was able to survive several bumps in a turn and keep things under control. It sucks that I ultimately couldn't keep the rubber side down.
Could've been worse. Helmets rock.