Coming to terms with the carnage
I know that there are times, usually immediately after crashes, when we start to question why we continue to race. For some reason this has gotten into my head. For instance, at the Reston Town Center grand prix, a technical crit here in the DC area last weekend, there were 18 crashes, 9 requiring medical attention, and 4 requiring hospitallization. And nobody really batted an eyelash at those stats.
Some of it falls on the race organizers, sure, but Reston was NOT a particularly technical course. Get a bunch of overly-aggressive cat 4's and 5's out there lacking perspective about what it is they're really racing for, though, and it's on like Donkey Kong. What makes this even more frustrating is that all of my crashes this year haven't been anything that I've actually done--I've just been stuck behind the crashes and have gotten sucked into them. The one that broke my frame was a "smart" crash on my part where I was barely injured, but then someone else joins the pile-up and lands on my frame, breaking it.
I just don't know how to come to terms with this. There are guys 10 years my junior who are willing to sacrifice themselves and their equipment doing dangerous ***** to win a $50 prize at a race. There are others who don't know what they're doing and don't seem to care. There are plenty of broken bones to go around among the BF racers I know and have ridden with.
Then there are the folks who will say "Well, then don't race crits." It's NOT just crits. The crash that destroyed my Powertap wheel, for instance, was some moron over-reacting to another rider's flat and making a sudden move right into the pack, taking out 6 guys, on a flat, wide-open straightaway in a road race.
I don't know what the point of this little rant actually is, but for any of you out there thinking that upgrading to cat 4 is going to put you in a safer field, you're wrong. I was never in a single crash as a Cat 5, and now this season I've been involved in 3 and was knocked out of contention this past week narrowly avoiding a 4th.
I guess I just need to get stronger and cat up to 3. At least around here it seems to be a much safer/smarter peloton.
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"Unless he was racing there was no way he could match my speed."