Originally Posted by Allegheny Jet

In a way at the State Master's Road Race Championship on Sat I did HTFU. I race in the 55-59 age catergory with our race combined with the 50-54 age group and the 60-69 group making a field of around 60 riders. The course was 41 miles consisting of 3 laps. The roads were good with many tight turns, rollers, two 2.5 minute climbs and a section of freshly paved narrow road. Due to the field size I spent 1/2 of the first lap working my way to the front since the "yellow line rule" was in effect. I was able to get to near the front when we hit the first climb. After that the race was a fast group ride until the 2nd lap when going through a technical area with two steep rollers about 12 of us got off the front. We started to work together and had a good gap on the field. We turned a bend just before one of the climbs and had to stop due to a crash in another race. They held us up for 1 minute and once we got the OK the whole group was back together. The 2nd half of lap 2 and lap 3 were hammerfests with attack after attack on hills and rollers. With 5 miles to go, and after we cleared the last climb, I drifted back to see who my competitors were. Of the 15 riders left in the lead group none were in my race. What a good feeling, I just needed to finish the race and I am State Champ. It must be the competitive nature in me because my thoughts were now "I can win this race". I worked my way up to about 5 or 6th in line and just followed the leaders waiting for the finish. With about 3 miles to go we rode up a series of 3 short steep rollers. All race long we attacked the rollers to have momentum over the top. On the first one about 1/2 way up the guys in front suddenly soft peddled causing a chain reaction that caused the rider in front of me to swerve and take my front wheel out. My 2nd crash of the year and at the worst time ever! I got banged up pretty good with road rash on my knee, hip, elbow, and shoulder. A rider ran into my back/rib cage then head. My helmet got pulled off and once we started to sort things out I needed to find it. After a couple minutes I determined that I was not hurt enough to take the ambulance ride being suggested. I looked at my bike and once I straightened out the shifter, re-centered the brakes and put the chain back on, I found that I could shift and didn't have any flats. The only problem was the bars were at a 45 degree angle to the wheel and I couldn't torque it back. I thought "what the hell" and noodled the last miles to the finish line with the bar at that angle.

The funny part is that when they were giving out the awards I ended up 3rd in the 55-59 yr race because we had such a gap on most of the other racers.

I guess the HTFU moment was when I got back on the bike and finished what I started with blood flowing from multiple locations.

Info for the Average Speed Addicts: 41 miles, including noodling back to the finish line with the bar at 45 degrees to the wheel = 24.1 mph ave