On July 3rd I did repeats on Booth Hill (above)...4700 feet long and rising over 420 feet. I'd discovered it from looking at geological maps in my office. It was so steep that if I didn't touch my brakes I'd be doing 52 miles an hour on just the last third of the descent. I was going so fast I had to slide off the back of the saddle for stability and lay on the brakes as hard as I could to stop before I hit the rough gravel trail at the bottom. It was the fastest I'd ever gone on a bicycle. After that I said to myself,"Okay...that's enough...I don't need to do that again!"The next day, on July 4th while riding at 27 miles an hour my front tire blew, locked against the front brake, and threw me over the front of the bicycle. It happened so fast I didn't know what happened. In an instant I was launched and slid 20 feet on my back until my helmet burrowed into the gravel. My knee was swollen, purple, and bleeding (along with other body parts) but I could still limp. My neck and back didn't feel too good either. My pedal hit the road shoulder so hard it had driven itself all the way into the ground and I thought it had been severred off. I immediately thought back to the previous day...what if this had happened at 52 miles an hour?
Thirteen days later, a little uneasy about being in my first race since the crash, the pedal which had been damaged in the crash came off, I went down hard, and slid down the road on the concrete. I lost a lot of skin and had to wear long-sleeve clothing because people would shudder when they looked at the bloody mess I'd made of myself. When I rode, bugs would stick in my open sores...yummy...