So, to bring everyone up to speed, I will skip most of the travel up to the past weekend and give you the goods from there…
On Sunday we went for a ride on the coast, near a small town named Ottsford. Rode off into one of Australia’s many national parks. The ride was great - nice ups and downs, and a little bit of flat in there for good measure. The road was windy and narrow, and as I rode along, I got to thinking again about motorists – I had slagged them in a previous post, but I failed to really speak to the good drivers, of which there are more than plenty. So I had decided early on in the ride that this was what my next post was to be about.
While driving that winding, and often slow road, many motorists (including motorcyclists) would wait patiently behind you until there was a decent flat/open stretch to pass. This is something that we, as cyclists appreciate. Nothing is worse than someone ramming past you on a blind corner, in a rush. In fact, I don’t know if we had a single bad motorist pass us on that ride (at least I certainly did not see one).
After a little more than an hour into the ride (it was a super-easy ride) I stopped to wait for Alli. From where I was stopped, I could see Sydney in the distance. Where I pulled over, I found a dollar coin on the side of the road… I took this to be a sign of good luck. I picked that dollar up, put it into my back jersey pocket and when Alli came up, we turned around for the second part of the journey.
I began to enjoy the ride back… easy on the hills up, hard on the way back down… the bends were a lot of fun (akin to driving a sports car in the mountains – though these were hardly mountainous roads ;) I took a particularly long steep and windy stretch hard, enjoying the curves – gaining speed as I went… and had a motorcycle right behind me doing the same (could hear him, but wasn’t looking back). As I came around the final tight turn of that descent, I was going somewhere around 50-60 km/h – and as I hit that turn, I realized I was pulling it too wide. With a car oncoming, and a motorcycle behind me, I lost my nerve and flinched. I do not even know what happened, but I went down. I missed the car in the far lane and the guy on the motorcycle behind me went down and bumped me from behind (this was an inconsequential “tap” after he had nearly come to a complete stop. I stopped very effectively with my body (and bike unfortunately).
Once I had come to a complete stop, I remember dragging my bike with one foot still attached to a pedal to the far side of the road… like a wounded animal.
Now if I had thought the motorists were good up to this point, you really should have seen the show after I crashed. The fellow on the Ducati behind me was unconcerned about anything but my well-being. This, despite the fact that he had just gotten his motorcycle back from being repaired… and the damage to his motorcycle was not pretty.
The next to stop was a couple in an SUV who helped the guy move his motorcycle off the road (I was in a bit of a state of shock still, and couldn’t quite grasp the fact that he could not easily lift the bike on his own). Once they got his bike off the road, we assessed the damage (no pun intended). I really cannot get a good view of my own ass, save for in the mirror (which was not readily available) so I had to take their word for it when they said it looked pretty bad. It certainly did smart – and my Speedo tri shorts were never to be the same again…
Alli came along, and it was sort of funny – she didn’t even realize what had gone on at first from the other side of the road things looked well – though she could not quite understand why everyone had decided to accumulate right on the bend at the bottom of a relatively steep decline. She was pretty upset when she saw the damage (probably more upset than me).
We exchanged details, and the couple that had stopped in the SUV were extremely generous in offering my bleeding butt a ride back to our van… and then subsequently offered us a place to stay. Did I mention that these people were FANTASTIC?? Wow… such super people. The guy on the bike… his attitude was “don’t worry about the bike, that’s what insurance is for – I am just glad you are all right.” Hmm… could I have had a better guy following me? And I have made no mention of his torn pants and scraped knee (though seemingly inconsequential to my injuries, they were incurred as a result of my poor judgment on that hill/corner).
Once I got back to the van, I surveyed the damage and pulled out the first aid kit. Cleaned off the two worn knuckles (ouch) and put band-aids on where possible.
Then I remembered my lucky dollar – checked in my back pocket, and it was still there.
Now, for the uninitiated, you might not have noticed, but despite all the damage done it was still a very lucky day. The damage done to bike and rider are insignificant to death, and I cheated death that day. If that car had been a couple seconds later, or had there been another car behind the first, I would have been in serious trouble. Ditto for the guy on the motorcycle – he very well could have ridden right overtop of me, and that would not have been a pretty picture.
Ah well – went down to the local lifesaving club and had the lifeguards check and clean my wounds (well, Alli did most of the cleaning actually, and they covered up the damage for me).
The bike had certainly seen better days – I shaved a significant amount of carbon from the front handlebars, but I think it will hold together. A few other scapes, and somehow scratched up the fork a bit, but I think all is well there as far as structural integrity goes.
All of this just seven days out from the race – this was a hard pill to swallow, but training came to a literal screeching halt after that. On Tuesday I visited a doctor’s office in Shoal Bay, where they promptly (minus the two hour wait in the lobby to get in) cleaned my butt up, patched it up, fired a tetanus shot into my left arm (ouch) and sent me on my way with a prescription for antibiotics to save me from any infection that might crop up.
Things have been sore, but by yesterday (Wednesday here) things have almost returned to good working order. My butt still hurts to sit on, and I am constantly aware of the missing skin, but it is not that big of a deal. Diversity in training is what I call that.
So… that was Sunday, and today is Friday. Just a few short days until race day. You should see this place – triathletes everywhere. At around 6:30 I woke up and went to the washroom, and an older fellow – probably mid sixties was coming out of the “amenities building” wearing dark blue spandex running tights and long white socks over top. Not something you would traditionally see at a caravan park (or at least not something that I would expect to see here when Ironman was not on).
I think I mentioned it in a previous post, but not too sure – the local tourist bureau started up an “adopt an athlete program” where businesses or individuals/families could adopt an out of town athlete to cheer on come Sunday (after all, most out of the athletes competing will be from out of town – out of 1,500 people competing, 24 countries are represented, and there are only 11 locals doing the Ironman – needless to say, those 11 locals will be well represented in the crowd).
Anyhow, I was lucky enough to get adopted by the local visitors center. The visitors center is staffed by a bunch of fantastic ladies, who were all very pleased to learn that they were sponsoring a “professional triathlete”. Oops… now who told them that?? I had to correct them, or else they would only serve to be disappointed, especially with my recent run-in with the road… well, that AND the very competitive nature of Ironman here in Australia. These Aussies are plain nuts… or at least their times have been incredible in years past.
The town has literally come alive with Ironman athletes… the caravan park is nearly full and it is mid-week. I am sure that the net impact on this small town will be substantial… probably the largest single even in the entire year. What is fascinating to watch, however, is the varying craziness of these athletes. It is clearly the time to slow down, yet on an easy jog that Alli and I did last night, this guy goes wizzing past us like he was on the way to a fire… but there is a lot of assuming going on here, so I will stop ;)
Final note – some of you are interested in watching our progress this weekend, and so I though I would share with you how to follow our progress – or at least how I believe that you will be able to follow our progress. You can go to http://www.ironmanlive.com on race day and look for a link to Ironman Australia (it should be pretty big and/or obvious on the day). Once you get the option to track an athlete, you will be able to search us out. Should you require our bib numbers they are: Alli – 318 and I am 1492. I do not think that those are subject to any change, but we don’t have our bibs yet.
Alli has not had much of a chance to access the internet either, and has not posted a blog entry for a while, but she will be on that shortly. Until then, she says HELLO to everyone that might be reading!
Until the next post, from Port Macquarie… Clinton and Alli
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