A little over two weeks ago I was racing the Soma HIM down in Tempe. I made little mention to the details of the race (other than that it didn't go so well), but I should mention that I had a crash... ...on the run. At the start of the run I clearly realized that I was WAY out of contention so I just decided to run at an IM effort in order to save my legs. As a result, I was occassionally running on the dirt/grass that paralleled the bike paths/sidewalks we were running on.

About 3/4 of the way through the first mile I was cruising along enjoying myself.

About 3/4 +.001 miles into the run I was on the ground.

Apparently they set porta pottis fairly close to the sidewalk, but they are even closer when you are running on the dirt. I came cruising by at the very moment that some dude swung the door open. I slammed into so hard that I fell backwards and actually did a somersault. I was left with a nice bruise/cut on my face as well.

All I could think was:

"That's about right."

This moment made me think back on things that have happened to me over the past 8+ years.

In 2002 I was racing a HIM in a speedo. I crashed on a chip sealed road.

I don't wear a speedo when I race any more. I suspect anyone that still does has not crashed while wearing one.

In 2003 I was on my way home from a ride in College Station, Texas. I was stopped at the train tracks (I spent about 967 hours on either side of these trains in college). As the train passed, the railroad crossing barriers rose. I began to ride across the tracks. Then the barrier cranked at its hinge and fell directly on me... ...like a tree falling in the woods. This did not happen in the middle of nowhere. This was one of the busiest intersections near campus (Wellbourne and G Bush for those in the know) and traffic kind of stopped in shock and people came over to see if I was ok (such humanitarians). I was OK because of my helmet.

Wear your helmet because something might fall on you.

In 2006 I was racing in Lake George, New York. The race director had invited me out to race and do a presentation the evening before the event. Its a lot of fun to do these sorts of things, but you definitely get the feeling that you_cannot_race poorly.

I came out of the water in 2nd and came out of T1 in first. Good deal.

The bike course began with a climb that went up a narrow bike path. I had my bike shoes on, but somewhere on the bike path I decided I needed to adjust the strap. I reached down to fix them.

Then I was on the ground.

I had managed to edge my wheel off course and I slammed down on the ground HARD. I thought about how awesome it would be to crash out of this race (that I wanted to win) in a single athlete collision... ...while leading the race.

Fortunately I didn't wreck my bike (or myself) too badly and I was able to roll on to victory.

In 2008, I crashed into a porta potti.