I've officially joined the Club !!

I went for an hour cycle up by the north shore to warm-up before my tri club cycling practice. It's funny, I was pulling away from a light and a cyclist in the other direction quickly pointed out to me to be careful, the police were ahead. Did he think I was going to speed off and then get a nasty ticket? Did I look like a racer? Cool ... so I didn't take off as per my usual kick, and didn't get any ticket. Just cruised by the police on their horsies who were eyeing all the cyclists and then when I was sufficiently past them, off I went ... zoom!

I came up behind a woman cyclist on a hill and when we continued, she started pointing out stuff so I said, "Aha! She knows what she's doing - she's done this before." So I figured this as an invitation to draft. We only went a couple of km's together but it was good practice to get over the freak factor of riding so close to someone's back wheel.

Lo and behold, that's the first thing we worked on in my tri practice. Erik, the coach, took the dozen or so of us out to the schoolyard again and had us practice drafting. Around and around we went. I did real well up to a certain moment until we started riding by three's ... around the corner yet again we went ... We were told to not slow down for the corners because of the accordion effect.

I didn't slow down, but the person in front of me did. I shifted my tire over a bit to avoid hitting one tire, but suddenly found myself beside another tire and I knew in that split slow-motion second that there was nothing I could do to change what would happen next. I cried out, "Sh*t!" and down I went, bringing some others with me.

I've always wondered whether I would unclip if I fell. Now I had my answer. The peloton wasn't travelling fast ... only 10-15km/hour since the schoolyard was so small. Still enough speed to hurt when thrown from your bike! No road rash though. Someone's knee broke my fall when I hurtled into it with my face.

My eye hurt a lot. My contact lodged elsewhere in my eye but eventually floated back. My head hurt. My elbow hurt. Oh, I would for sure have some good bruising. After I checked out okay, and found out that no one else got hurt, the inevitable question, "Is my bike okay?"

Freida was a little mangled, but it was easy enough to turn her handlebars and seat back into position - whew! Erik said I was a real cyclist now. Story over ...

Off we went for a cycle through the cemetary. Erik made me ride with him in the front. We started climbing and it got very quiet. The pack had fallen behind. Let me just say a few things about the path we took:

1) I have never seen a hill so steep in my life. It was a veritable wall in certain spots.
2) Good thing I have decent brakes (for the descent).
3) I have a fear of not being able to unclip fast enough when my bike is at a standstill (i.e. like it was when I hit "the wall" and had not downshifted in time because I hadn't known it was coming)
4) I want to conquer this climb one day - GRRRRR!!!

So all in all, I spent about 2.5 hours on my bike, though I don't think I covered a load of mileage since we weren't travelling so fast as a group, especially not on the climb! But I'm getting used to being on my bike for longer periods, which is good.

Question is: with my sore elbow, will I be able to swim tomorrow? Arnica is my friend. She got rid of my black eye too.


I celebrated my first crash with a cyclist buddy over some dessert. I told him about how I felt like a fake cyclist but how all the other geared-up cyclists wave to me. We had an epiphany - it's not a "hi, how are you?" wave, it's a "you've got the gear" wave. And so I do. I mentioned that maybe I should start wearing lipstick or something so I don't get mistaken for a guy. He said not to worry about that ... male cyclists can figure it out and think that any female on a bike is "hot".