Wednesday, May 26, 2010
F4 triathlete and seasoned cyclist Deanna Hoover shares about her bike crash at the recent Summer Open Triathlon
The Summer Open Bike Wreck
The Summer Open was not one of my best races, but overall it was a good learning experience.
Many thanks go out to F4 for the support and kind words. F4 helped make what could have been a miserable day, very tolerable. Special thanks to Scott for taking care of my bike, and Dean for going above and beyond with the ride from the hospital. I’ve participated on a few teams throughout the years, and I must say that none of them provided the generosity that I experienced with F4.
What I learned most from the Summer Open accident is to not take for granted the bike handling skills of myself or other competitors. The Summer Open is a great event for all levels of competitors. We were all first time competitors at one time and deserve to participate accordingly. During races such as this it is an opportunity for the more advanced riders to practice the skills that we have learned throughout the years, and at the F4 clinic. Yes, I have crashed before in bike races, and while I‘m not suggesting that anyone practice crashing during a race, I would recommend brushing up bike handling techniques and awareness from time to time.
The first bike crash that I ever experienced was by far my worse (and many years ago) because I didn’t know to what I didn’t know about making the crash less painful. Riding a bike in a pack or at a race takes far different skills than those required for our Sunday long rides. Competitors in the race not only have a variety of bike handling skills, but some have never been on a course with others zooming by at 20+ miles per hours. In my case, the young girl on the mountain bike appeared to be out enjoying the race at a slow pace, and I am guessing that she did not understand the risks associated with riding in a group of type A triathletes. I am also quite sure she did not intend to cut me off.
Perhaps others can learn from my experience, so I’ll explain what happened.
I was approaching a right hand turn; I looked up and saw a mountain bike rider in front of me and to my right. She was staring to move left as I approached her. In order to avoid (as long as possible) hitting her back tire, I started slowing down and moving left with her. As I got close to the cones on the left and closer to the turn, I decided to let the other competitor know I was on the left. I did realize that one risk included her looking left and turning in front of me. In order to mitigate the damage, I moved as far left as possible before letting her know I was passing on the left. I had two reasons for doing this. First, a majority of the other competitors were on the right, and I didn’t want to take them out if/when I went down. The second was it gave me time to slow as much as possible and hit her tire at an angle that would possibly not take her down. The inevitable happened. I hit her back wheel went over the bars. By instinct I let go f the bars, tucked my chin under and rolled. My bike helmet is cracked, my bike has minor damage, the other rider continued on without injury, and I only suffer from road rash. Overall, it turned out OK.
My hope is that others never have to experience a crash in a race, but knowing it’s a possibility and preparing in advance is something I highly recommend.
The bike portion of the ride was just icing on the cake by the way. Prior to the swim the zipper in my wetsuit broke, I hyperventilated during the swim (basically I panicked as people swam over me) and had to grab the kayak for a few minutes, and then the band to my Garmin came loose as I was getting out of the water causing the Garmin to sink to the bottom – but I found it.
Hopefully I got all the “bad” stuff out of the way early in the season.