Pain in the Plain - 2011 Palo Duro Marathon

An understatement.... It is a bit hard to type at the moment so this may be briefer than normal, although pain and agony has not slowed me down much in the past!

I wanted to wrap up my 2011 racing season with a bang, and I did! Not what I was planning or even envisioned though.

Some good friends and I headed down to Canyon Texas for the kick off of the Texas MTB Marathon season at the Palo Duro Marathon. I raced there last year after hardly riding my bike for a month and suffered greatly. This year I was not in top form, but better than last year, and my final set of intensity workouts showed I was still in reasonably good shape. Good enough to have a great race. I was excited and tried to maintain my usual reality check, but in the back of my head I was thinking about how I might be able to get a podium on Saturday.

Thursday I piled into Jonathan's Transit along with Les and two dogs. We had about an 8 hour drive ahead of us. The trip seemed to not take long at all, we had great conversation all the way and the next thing we knew Amarillo was ahead of us. We had been "hooked up" with awesome camping right on the race course by Karie, the race promoter, and got after hours access into the park. Very awesome, much appreciated! The park was a bit confusing to find our camp area in the dark but after a few drive by attempts we noticed the gate and made it in at about 11:30 PM. I climbed into the sleeping cubby in the transit and dozed off to sleep, although I did have a few panic attacks during the night when waking thinking I was locked in some little box (like a coffin)!

Friday we were met up with Brian and then Sonya from Ergon and had a fun preride of the course. I was so excited! The race course is all 100% singletrack (well, a couple of road crossings), and no climbing or technical rocky sections. Plus it was warm out!

We finished with our ride and went about the business of race preparation along with eating and hanging out. By dark it was getting cool out so we all headed to bed by about 7:30PM. Surprisingly I fell asleep right away and stayed asleep until about 3:30 AM when coyotes came into the camp and were howling and yipping for twenty minutes or so. Little did I realize that Brian's food got raided by a family of racoons and the coyotes must have been there wanting to get in on the action!

Saturday was a comfortable wake up. The race was schedule for a 10AM start so there was no hurry in the morning like usual. Then it was delayed a bit until 10:30AM. As I expected, the start was fast over about 1 mile of pavement before hitting dirt. There were a lot of crazies that had poor bike handling skills especially in a tight bunch and there were several near catastrophic crashes. I was rear ended really hard and had to swerve into the grass to avoid the racers right in front of me. This left me near the back of the group, so I had to a good 30 second max effort sprint to get close to my position I wanted to be in before hitting the single track. I didn't quite get there and was about 10 people further back than my teammates. This set off the series of events that followed.

Once we got through the mini start loop traffic started to spread out. I was caught behind several racers who could not maintain the original effort and they were slowing me down. I kept telling myself to not to panic and ride smooth, but I kept finding myself panic pedaling at really high RPMs and I was locking my shoulders causing me to be a little "rico swerve" on the singletrack. I recognized this and kept saying to myself "calm down". I wasn't warmed up and was trying to throttle myself and that wasn't helping. Finally I worked my way around a final bunch about 1/3 of the way through the first lap and had open trail ahead of me.

I collected myself, got my heart rate in check and started to rail the trails. As I relaxed I smoothed out and everything started to flow. Slowly I was catching racers ahead of me. My goal was to make contact with teammates so we could pace together as much as possible, I didn't think they were too far ahead of me and wanted to catch them before the first lap was completed. So I completely railed the fast smooth single track, pushing big gears.

I got to a little road section that connected two trails and I thought I saw my teammate Brian just turn the corner at the top of the road, so I put the hammer down to catch up to him. There was about 5 miles left of the first loop. I was feeling great, had power, and was having fun. As I came up to the left hand turn onto the singletrack and I was carrying a lot of speed, I was turning a 39x12 or 14 and was going full bore. The trailhead had a framed gated entrance with 10 inch round posts on each side, going dead center gave about six inches of clearance on both sides of the handle bars. The trail met the pavement with about 10 feet of loose gravel... then about another twenty feet to the gate with the posts.

I turned into the trail I rode onto the gravel probably doing close to 20 mph and my front wheel just slid sideways, I corrected and stayed upright but I was no longer dead center of the opening in the gate, I was dead center with one of the posts, still carrying my speed. I tried to correct again and my left handle bar and pinky finger hit the post causing me to cross up the steering, so my front wheel went perpendicular to my direction of travel, which had a similar affect as suddenly grabbing the front brake as hard as possible. Slow motion set in...

As I felt myself rotating forward I looked at my handlebars and could see them crossing the frame of the bike, the further I rotated I noticed my fork starting to rebound from fully compressing to the crown... back to real time...

As I hit the ground I heard a pop, kind of like the sound of a bubble in the large bubble wrap sounds when one gets popped. Then I think I had a few seconds of being knocked out maybe, because I don't remember everything but suddenly the course marshal at the turn was next to me. I felt weird all over. As I got up I could feel something rubbing in my right shoulder and as I tried to move my arm I had tremendous pain. I reached my left hand up and felt the broken collarbone moving under my touch... makes me feel woozy just writing about it.

So, the park service and the race EMT came to check me out, basically confirmed I broke my collarbone. They took me back to the staging area and asked the usual questions while I was put in a sling. I was helped over to my camping area and was made sure I was reasonably comfortable. Lucky me the race director was the head of the Amarillo Trama Center and he came by to take a look. I was reassured the break was no big deal and I could wait until I got home to Denver if I wanted to get trama care closer to home.

Many thanks to the race organizers and medical staff, Joe in particular, who checked on me several times over the course of the day to make sure I wasn't in need of more attention. They are all very nice and helpful people! Thanks a bunch!

After the race was finished I was feeling okay enough to cheer my friends who had awesome races and got on the podiums. Jonahan Davis threw it down and got 4th in the Pro category racing against a Pro Pro (a racer who's occupation is actually racing mountain bikes for Jamis, one of the top racers in the U.S), my coach who is also a very talented Pro racer who is one of the best in the region, and a local pro who knew the trails like the back of his hand. Awesome job Jon! Brian got 3rd in his age group and I think was in the top 20 overall, and Les who had a rough season improved on his time over last year and hung in there even though he was suffering badly! Sonya from Topeak-Ergon crushed the course and got first place in the ladies Pro race! Congrats to all you guys for showing those Texans how to race mountain bikes!

After the celebration my travel buddies helped me load my stuff into Brian's truck for a smoother ride home. It had been suggested that I would be more comfortable if I could get medical care before the long drive home, so Brian was nice enough to spend some extra time driving around Amarillo to get me to an Urgent Care facility. I got a figure eight brace to pull my shoulders into place so my break could heal and not rub so much on the drive home, as well as some anti-inflammation relief. Then we ate, drove, stopped to sleep, and finally made it back home.

I'm avoiding the pain relievers as much as possible. I have some prescription strength ibuprofen and that's all I'm taking. Doing things like taking a shower and using the bathroom are quite challenging! I have some occasional tremendous pain, but am feeling good enough to type at the computer.

I guess I have made the rite of passage of most cyclists now, I have the broken collarbone.

This wraps up a great season racing on the Epic Endurance Cycling Team! Onward to Rocky Mountain Racing for 2012!

Enjoy the following pictures from the trip!