Yesterday my 2016 luck just continued.  And that isn’t a good thing.  I decided to go outside and brave the drizzle, wind and cold and ride.  I thought I’d just go for an hour or so, but I felt pretty good and decided to just ride into headwind until I felt like turning around.  The wind was mainly from the west, but a little north.

Pretty soon I was on a real ride.  I felt pretty great, at least for January, and my power was super.  So I rode about an hour out against a 30 mph headwind and started back.  My average wattage was approaching 300, but I knew that would go down with tailwind.

Fast forward a few miles and I am about 8 miles from home.  One hill left.  I decided I’d sprint the hill and call it a day.  I’m not too big right now hauling through town, mainly because of all the sand on the roads, but also since I really can’t use my left hand, which is my rear brake on my cyclocross bike.

Anyway, I am at the bottom of the hill and get off my seat to sprint and next thing I know I’m going over my bars.  I was using the Bar Mitts, so my hands were essentially stuck on my brake levers.  That was a pretty weird feeling.  Kind of like toeclips for your hands.  Before I hit the ground, I realized that my right pedal had broken.  But, I was wrong.  My right crank arm broke at the pedal spindle.

On Strava, it said I was only going 23.8, but I hit pretty hard.  I got up slow, cursing the whole time.  I was standing in the middle of the road and a Highway Patrol car pulled up with his lights on.  He said he was going at me from the other direction and saw the whole thing.  He asked if I was alright and I told him yes, not really knowing if that was true.

He told me he would give me a ride home, but I told him I was okay.  I told him my crank arm broke and needed to find my pedal. I thought it should be connected to my shoe, but it wasn’t. The officer got out and helped me look, but it wasn’t around.   I thanked him again and he took off.

I decided to call Trudi, but she didn’t answer.  She was out riding.  I looked for the pedal and piece of crank arm again, but no luck.  I had fallen on a bridge and it must have just went off the edge.  I walked down the rock pile they had put for erosion, but soon realized I would be frozen by the time I might find it.

So I got on my bike and rode home, left leg only.  The first hill I was only climbing about 7 mph and I knew I had 8 miles, so thought it was going to take a while.  But I was riding mainly tailwind and when I got on the flats, I was cruising mid 20’s.   So, I got home fine.  For sure this is the furthest I’ve ever ridden with one leg.  It wasn’t so bad.  I averaged 186 watts.  Maybe I should try it more often?

My bike was a mess.  My cranks, obviously, were ruined.  The arms had a Quarq power meter attached, so that isn’t good.  Plus I destroyed my Bar Mitts and did a number on my Dura-Ace Di2 carbon levers. Plus, lost my right pedal.

Clothing, I destroyed my booties, gloves and thermal jersey.  My hat and tights made it out unscathed.

My body could have been worse, but it isn’t great.  Of course, I re-injured my thumb.  That is a given.  But I also broke the ring finger on my same hand, (left).  I’m going to head over and get an x-ray this morning to see if it is displaced.  Plus another one of my thumb.  My left hand is a mess.  Plus I tweaked my neck, hitting the ground somewhat headfirst.  That will get better I think.

The good part is that I was going pretty well.  Was thinking about searching for a race to do.  I better put that on the back burner until I figure this all out.

Later yesterday, I drove back over to the crash site and searched for my pedal and crank arm piece for about 30 minutes.  It is super bad luck it happened there.  I think it went off the bridge and went down between a bunch of rocks.  I’m really not that interested in looking anymore.

What are the chances of my crank arm breaking? I guess it happens sometimes.   Okay, maybe that is it for the year?  I can only hope.

Search area. Bad luck it happened here.

Bar Mitt. I only had them a month.

Bad finger.

Culprit. By the color of the aluminum, it looks like it had been cracked before it broke.

Yesterday I was riding with my brother and Bill and it was pretty windy.  Not really windy, just pretty windy.  It was probably less than 20mph, but not by much.  Bill was saying that he didn’t think that he’d done a ride in January with wind less than 15 and most of the time it was more.  I agreed.  He was sort of complaining about it.  He said he would appreciate a calm day that he could just go out and do a long ride and not have to fight the wind.

I told him I thought the wind was great.  I give the wind credit for the reason that many times, riders from around here beat up the competition pretty seriously at the regional races in early season.  There is no easy riding when the wind is blowing over 20 most of the time.

I’ve always liked the wind.  I’m not that big on straight tailwind (because of my lack of power), but I do like wind to help make the plan at the start of the ride.

Early season, I’m not big riding into straight headwind off the bat.  When it is super windy, we tend to try to do more crosswinds on the ride.  I’ll usually try to convince everyone that we generally head out against crosswind, slowly jogging into headwind every once in a while, thus storing up the potential tailwind for the ride home.   It doesn’t really do anyone any good by having to struggle into a 20 mph headwind, while the rest of us are sitting on going way too easy sitting on.

I’ve raced in some pretty windy places.  The windiest has to be in Southern New Zealand.  The Tour of Southland is a windy mess.  And by windy, I mean 50+ mph windy.  I did that race 3 or 4 times and it was always the same.  One year there, they stopped a stage at the top of a climb because the officials had deemed the descent too windy to race.  I wasn’t into that at the time, but now looking back upon it, that was a good decision.

Races in windy conditions interest me.  I like the dynamics of fighting for positions.  Riders with more experience will nearly always excel in these conditions.  I wrote a post about racing in New Zealand a few years ago.  It shows how being smart in big wind can work out well.  Here is a link.

Anyway, don’t let the wind scare you off when considering whether you’re going to be riding inside or outside this winter/spring.  And never skip a windy race.  Racing in the wind is the absolute best way to get good at racing in the wind.

Historically, it has been pretty windy racing in the Middle East. I think the beauty of cycling exposes itself with windy echelons.