So, here I am, sitting in the office on a Thursday evening. Why you may ask? Well it is not that I have one of my usual evening conference calls – those are all done (got to love daylight saving and the fact that it means that I’m 1 hour closer to US East Coast). No, I’m here because some idiot didn’t realize that you can’t take a 90 degree corner at 50km/hr + on a bicycle.
Let me explain. On Sunday I joined 35,000 others in riding The Argus, a cycle 109km race around the Cape Peninsular. It is pretty spectacular – you head over 4 mountain passes, riding most of the race next to the sea. But, as I’m sure you can imagine, 35,000 people anywhere makes it pretty crowded. I was fortunate enough to be “seeded” which meant I got an earlier start and which meant that I was aiming for a decent finishing time. All was going well until about 3kms from the finish and this idiot careered past me and then into the safety bales. Unfortunately (for him and me) he ended up lying (with parts of his bike) across the road in front of me. The decision was: person or bike. I chose bike. The end result was a rapid greeting of the road, gutter and pavement. Amazingly my bike was ok but to add insult to injury (literally) I also got a flat. I still finished in a decent time but…… it could have been so much better (and I could be sailing instead of gingerly using my leg and arm)….
The good news is that my incident was the worst of all my colleagues and friends that did the race (unless of course if you include the case of sunburn that our supporters on the route ended with) and I should be ok for a mountain bike on this weekend.
