Haut fur doma

This was a phrase I have not heard uttered in a race situation until I let er' loose in yesterday's race. Basically, too many overly excited bike racers in the hurt box (see gutter) not watching the wheels around them lead to a 15-20 man pile up. With me caught in the middle. Oh, and all this happened about 5km into the race. You could hear it coming with Calyon jersey's scattered across the road and the traditional sounds of crunching carbon, girlish screams, and metal encountering pavement. I'm sure you could smell some burning flesh too as we were holding about 45+km/h at the time. As I was moving up at the time (and in the top 1/3 of the pack) I took a quick looks for an escape plan only to find myself boxed in by 2 confused riders refusing to use their available exit strategies so instead grabbed my breaks like the rest only to plow into Joel Poitras of team RACE pro, who was also down, and then grabbed some hang time as I ditched the bike and continued my forward trajectory over top of him. Landed down pretty hard on the shoulder area and then continued my 'drop & roll' technique ending my with a rashed shoulder/arm, a very sore back and a bloody knee. Got up, straighten out then many parts on my bike, quick broken bone check, tied off my SRM power sensor and then a fat and energetic French man gave me a wicked push to get going. 3 laps of mostly solo chasing all out allowed me to finally get a group which latched onto the Junior/Senior 3 break. Truly an embarrassing and angering situation. After they sprinted, I went to the front of the chase group with 3 others and put some coals on the fire which lead to our group of 8-10 quickly becoming a group of 4, then 3, then 2. The 2 of us manged to work the final 2 laps well together and hold off the remainder of the peloton/break to finish the race. As many of you know, I hate that DNF more than most things in the world. Picked up my new bag of schwag from the team car (see custom team edition Oakly Radars) and hit the road to try and cure my injuries before next weekend. I think I need to head out and ride soon, thinking a little spin on the tt bike to work out the stiffness and hopefully beat the rain.