KS State Champs - Three Strikes your out!

This year the KS State CX Championships were held under sunny and mild weather conditions that made for some great racing. The new course at St. Marys was pretty good and had a nice flow to it. As you can see in the picture Chris and the crew put in a lot of work to make this a good course(that's a bunch of stakes).

So now I'll start my sorry of a day gone wrong............. It was just a normal race day, got off to the races on time,wait, that's unusual. Anyway, I'm cruising along with my mind somewhere else and find myself driving to the Wyandotte Co. park course. Damn, there's road construction on K-7 so now I have to backtrack. But I'm not stressed, no, because I left on time..... (Strike 1)So I get to the venue and pull my bike out of the van to do a quick pre-ride lap before I sign up. I get back to the van and hop in the front seat, kick back, and give Troy a call to help me decide what race to do, Masters, 1,23, or both. Decide to do both, hop out of the van, lock the doors and slam the door shut. About then I patted my leg to make sure I had my wallet in my pocket and found out that both my wallet and my KEYS fell out of my pocket and are on the floor of the van.(Strike 2) Still not stressed(ok, now I'm a little stressed) but I saw a campus security guy earlier and I figured they all ways carry slim jims (not the kind you eat, the kind you slide down inside doors) So I find him but all he can offer is to help me find a coat hanger. In the meantime I went dumpster diving to find a hangar and did end up finding something that might work. Got back to the van and Mr. security shows up with a coat hangar, yea, my savior! 30 minutes later I managed to get into my car. Yea, I know, daddy was in the car business so I know how to get into cars.
So now I have just enough time to sign up, throw on a kit, and head to the starting line for the masters race. The race itself was going pretty well and I was sitting in 2nd with half a lap to go when I crashed. (Strike 3)I guess there was a hole in the corner but I never saw it. One of those crashes that you don't see coming and you'r picking yourself up before you know what happened. From the looks of my jersey and helmet I hit head and shoulder first. My helmet has cracks on the inside and the jersey is stained right on top of the shoulder.

So I got up and knew that was as far as I was going to go. Walked a bit before I noticed a huge hematoma on my shin and started to feel sick. I had to sit down and collect myself and figure out how bad I was hurt. I was worried it was a collarbone because of the lump developing on my shoulder but I had pretty good movement. I've broke quite a few bones in my time and I didn't think that was the problem. I got back to my car thanks to Scott and Ben who helped me get packed up so I could drive home and pack myself in ice.

So today I went to see the doc. After some poking and prodding from the doc and plenty of squirming and wincing from me I was off for x-rays. The x-rays comfirmed my doctors and my suspicions, no broken bones, YEA!!!!!!!!!! Diagnosis, a separation of the AC joint. That's where your collarbone and shoulder bone meet. After some tests it appears that the joint is not torn and is just badly bruised. I asked the doc how long before I can race again and he asked me how much pain I can stand. Hmmmmmmmmm, So for now it's time to take a few painkillers, ice the injury, and wait for the swelling to go down. I guess I can live with a few days on the trainer as it's a whole lot better than a broken collarbone!