Tour of PA was lots of fun, got to see lots of old cycling friends and even make some new ones. I hadn’t done a UCI race since my last stint in Europe in 2006. I had forgotten how much fun they were. So many fo-hawk variations I felt out of place. I am clearly not up to snuff in the cycling-fashion world.
I rode as a guest rider for Team VRC: NOW/MS-society. It was a fun group for sure. They had a Hilarious Kiwi/Aussie combo as well as two other riders from California, Nick and Eric. Adrian Gerrits and I were both guest riders for the team. Everyone treated Adrian and I like we were part of the team, and when we ended up being their GC contenders they didn’t miss a beat, and poured everything into that. If anything they were TOO selfless. The staff was Awesome too! We had some newbies, but I wouldn’t have known it had they not told me.
The good
On Stage 4 (the 2nd climbing stage), it split up pretty bad on the first climb, and unlike the day before it stayed that way, aside from He-Man Christoff Van Heerden, who just lost contact with us at the top, but clawed his way back on before we got too organized. A couple more riders fell off on the 2nd climb, where it was raining like crazy on us. There were 12 of us coming into the finish with lots of attacking in the last 10k. I waited and attacked with 3km to go, since it was wet and there were far better sprinters than I in the bunch. I got caught just before 50 meters to go. Christoff took the GC, since we dropped 1st and 2nd place overall on the climb. Peter Stetina kept the Climbers Jersey, Peter Salon kept the young rider jersey and I got the most aggressive rider jersey. The bad thing was that we only had a minute gap on the field at the finish, which wasn’t enough to move me up to top 10, but still moved Adrian down 2 spots. Exactly what I didn’t want to happen. Well that’s not the real bad thing. That’s next…
Here’s a short video summary of the stage
The bad
Yep, that’s a broken Clavicle. Piece of cake. I’ve broken this puppy twice before. It’s annoying, but tolerable… That’s still not the bad news. Let me tell the story, since I have already told it 8 million times to friends and family (not that I mind)
Apparently on Stage 5 about 20 miles from the finish I was descending off the final climb and overlapped wheels with another rider. I hit the deck going about 45mph and lost consciousness on impact (fortunately). I woke up in the hospital a while later totally out of it. I had a bad concussion. Really Bad. They took x-rays and then a CT scan. I told them my hip was broken and my collarbone was broken. There results concurred with my diagnoses, although they seemed to think I had a ruptured liver too?!
Broken hip! There’s your bad news. It’s actually the acetabulum that’s fractured. Thanks to the broken clavicle I can’t use crutches, so I get to be in a wheel chair!
Good Friends to the rescue!
So I was stuck at the UPMC hospital in Pittsburgh. They didn’t really care that I wanted to go home, they only cared about my well-being. Can you believe it! Jerks. I was devising elaborate escape plans, filing down shivs to stab the nurse and etc. I got tons of calls once the news got out. Docvia’s Noah Roberts jumped on the ball immediately. Between him, Chris Zenthoefer and Chad Cagle, they coordinated my escape. Noah called the hospital and had the nurse bring me all these forms to fill out, so that people could get my information, then he sent a Dr. friend of his over and had him start getting my info, which allowed us to understand what was actually going on. Chad booked a flight for Mark (my coach) to fly over and get me. Mark only had to stay one day before they released me due to all the pressure we put on them. I would still be there right now if it wasn’t for all my friends and families help. I have never been so happy to be in Oklahoma!
