Salinas Criterium - May 7th, 2017

Ouch.

There's a word to describe this crit.

I did this race to put in some final race training for mountain bike State Championships the following weekend. Since the race was less than twenty miles from my house, I decided to just ride there. I was planning on putting in some solid efforts, and spending the majority of the race at the front so that I was consistently putting in work.

That's just what I did, until the final lap. I positioned myself to a spot where I would be able to launch off of the front going into the last couple corners and take the sprint. Four corners to go - check. Three corners to go - check. Two corners to go - NOPE. The leading rider goes down and does an endo-flip sort of thing and I had nowhere to go but into another rider. Fortunately, I did not cause that rider to go down, but I hit the ground. HARD. I did an unintentional pencil dive off of the left side of my bike and hit my head first. I bounced up and was super dizzy for a few seconds. I walked in circles for a couple minutes, checking myself over. I look at my body - barely any road rash. Literally two small scrapes and a couple tiny wounds. I take my helmet off next, and that's where there were issues. My helmet was cracked at the back half through the right side to the middle.

I felt alright, but my helmet didn't say so. A few hours later, the crash really hit me. I started to develop a headache and my neck and back started to ache. I did some stretching and icing trying to help the swelling go down. The day following was not pleasant. I spent the majority of the day trying to make my movements as small as possible, so that I wouldn't trigger any further pain throughout my body.

Later, I went and got checked by the doctor. As I guessed, I had a concussion. Though it was a mild concussion, I was told that it should not be taken lightly. The doctor gave me a schedule of when to get back on the bike and what type of training I should do for a few days after I got back on. I read what it said and saw that the earliest I could go back to racing of any sort was the following Monday.

YEAH, THAT WASN'T GOING TO WORK. I had California mountain bike State Championships the following Sunday. I talked to the doctor and we came to an agreement that I could slightly accelerate the plan so that I would be able to race at State Champs. Though I would not be anywhere near prime racing condition, it was definitelybetter than nothing.

The days after where spent getting as much sleep as possible and hoping and praying that I would be well enough to race State Championships in Petaluma.

Photography: Gabriel Stewart