Crash Crash Crash!

Monday's practice started out as usual. We signed in, warmed up, stretched, and did some exchanges. After a couple of exchanges, I joined a pace line and then it happened.

After a couple of fast laps, two girls in front of me decided to pull off without really saying anything. I slowed down immediately, and I thought everything was going to be alright. However, there were people riding on the right side of the pace line and those girls could not pull out all the way so they tried to get back into the pace line. I didn't have any choice but to ride into them. There were some scrambling and I went down. I can’t remember if anyone else did.

When I realized what just happened, I was laying on my back on the track, looking at the sky. I saw the EMC people running towards me, heard the announcement about the crash and people asking me "Are you okay? Did you break your collar bone?" Thankfully, I didn’t break anything, but I could feel pain in my side, my hip, my elbow, my quad, and my knees. I laid on the track for another few seconds then I got up. My legs were shaking really hard, because we were going pretty fast in the pace line before the crash. I was coughing my lungs out, not because of the crash but because I’ve been sick forever. People probably thought I was dying or something.

Fortunately, I wasn't seriously injured (I have bruises and cuts, here and there), but unfortunately, the left side of the handlebar was completely bent.

A few moments later, I was thinking, “I have something to write about on the blog!” I was pretty excited. Now I can say that I have crashed on the Little 500 track! It can count as one of my milestones in my cycling life, right? Hopefully it would be my last one, and there won’t be any more from our team.