Gravel Road Rash

Decided Sunday to head down to St. Louis for the Castlewood Mtb race. I figured they would have a good field and they would be on their home trails for once which would make it fun. Everything started out pretty well, Breslin took the lead and I was more than happy to follow as I figured I would have some trouble on the descents with a hurt hand. Soon it was Breslin, myself, Ploch, and John Schlotter with nobody else in sight. We were cruising along at a nice pace when Dave flatted which put me into the front. I picked up the pace a bit on the next climb to see how the other two were feeling and then we rode together for the rest of the lap as it was mostly downhill and I felt like I was holding the local Ploch up. We hit a flat fast section at the bottom and were cruising along, then a right turn came up and I found myself flying over the bars with Chris ramming into my bike. I untangled the bike and checked out my injuries as the other two rode off. After figuring out that everything hurt except my hand, I decided to continue. I rode a decent lap, just having fun, hoping to catch up later in the race when I went around that corner again, and again, found myself flying over the bars. It was a rock on the outside of the trail that my pedal kept clipping. By now I had gravel road rash from my shoulder to my knee and was hurting pretty bad. I stopped at my cooler and planned on quitting. The entire field went by and I decided I might as well do another lap to get in a workout. Turns out my pedal was broken and I couldnt clip in, plus the rear der. was bent and I only had a few gears. I worked my way through the entire field, back up to 3rd and then called it a day so I could start with some injury recovery. Too much crashing lately. Ploch won pretty handily. Castlewood's trails are pretty fun, lots of little climbs and descents with some fast singletrack, ive been there twice, and never finished a race yet.