So recently I have been having a pretty bad run with crashes on my bike. My very first club cycle race was out in the Wairarapa 2009, very unexperienced I was, had done 100k the day before and thought that would fine with a race the next day, it wasn't. A group of 8 or so of us had just been dropped from the main bunch and our response was to fall off our bikes, well me and one other. I ended up with a broken shoulder and in the hospital, the beginning of my bad run.
The second was pretty much a year later to the day, a nasty fall in a fun race, don't ask me what happened because I have no idea, one word, concussion. The photo on the right is after I had been cleaned up a little bit. About 30 stitches to the face and some nice road rash to boot.
Once I got the bike fixed and was back into the training after a solid month off (wasn't long enough) I was hit by a car. The general "I didn't see you" case, I was hit from the back so didn't even see it coming. I managed to escape with minor bruising and some gashes in the elbow. Heres me hanging out in the hospital making it look way worse then it actually is.
I know we all have near misses, with cars 'nearly' hitting us, our adrenaline goes sky high and we pound the pedals as if it will change something. Today I also had a near miss. At a round about with a little old man in a little old car. I shook all the way home, tried getting rid of the feeling by riding as hard as I could but it didn't work. The past falls have thrown my nerves off balance for sure and training on the main roads and near cars is starting to become a thing of the past for me.
If only I was bigger and had more presence on the road, but please at every intersection anticipate a cyclist coming your way and have a bit of patience, we are going faster than you think.
