Going into the last turn of the race with 100 yards to go, sitting in the top 20 spots, two guys crash to the floor, skidding and ripping their jerseys. I slammed my brakes, putting me into a 20-foot skid that was halted by a guy’s ribs as he lay on the ground, pretzeled into his broken bike. I somersaulted off the bars, doing a crab position onto the bike’s pedal, and then rolling onto the asphalt. I stood up with adrenaline sputtering out my ears and, looking around, I saw a pair of orange lenses on the ground. That day I had just bought a pair of orange lenses for my glasses and I freaked out that I had already broken them. I had to touch my eyes to assure myself that mine were still on my head. But I sympathised with the owner of the lenses. I then worried about my wheels, thinking they may have bent. I then picked a bike off a guy lying moaning on the ground, and then opted not to help move him for fear of a lawsuit. I then gave a high five to the guy I had been with earlier as we went into the turn, as he looked like he had gone through a similar experience.
I expected my first road crash to be a gnarly skid at 30 miles an hour around a turn, which sent me skidding for 200 feet as the tight spandex tore off my body and was replaced with road rash, slamming into hay bales and bouncing ten feet into the air doing twists, only to land on a big-bosomed girl holding two one-litre beer mugs.