Thursday Ride
I've been trying to get 2 to 4 hours during the week on the bike pulling the kids in their trailer. We go to "The Little Gym" in Ashburn, we go shopping, we visit Mommy at work. Trips in to Ashburn have a pretty good set of hills that I work pretty hard on; so yesterday, when I tried the Reston Bike Club's thursday ride, I felt like a rocket without the trailer behind me. I was able to keep up with the "B+" group, which I had trouble with before RAAM. I was briefly entertaining the idea of jumping up to the "A" group, when I lost focus, touched wheels with the rider in front of me and went skidding across the pavement on my non-broken rib side.
Two faster riders who had been dropped from the "A" group, came back along the road and joined the back of the pack (where I was). We came to a right hand turn and I looked over my left shoulder to see where they were, only saw one and then turned to look over my left shoulder. I hadn't paid attention to the pack which was slowing faster than I was and while I was looking over my right shoulder, I touched wheels and went down. If I had been looking forward, it just would have been a nasty scrapping sound, I could have reacted and everything would have been fine, but there's not much you can do when you're looking backwards. Lesson learned.
The group stopped, I immediately got back on the bike, but after that, it felt like I was pedaling with a brake rubbing (it wasn't I checked). I got dropped about 5 or 10 minutes later and spent the rest of the ride with a guy on what looked like a "comfort bike" (flat handlebars, fat road tires, rear disk brake).
I've got some road rash on my right knee and right elbow, but I'm pretty sure my rib is ok. My first thought as I was falling was "Please God, do not let the rib break again." Its been 6 weeks since it first broke and the doctor told me it would take 6 or 7 weeks to heal.
