Daniel A. Antonson

PIR racers,

I'm the rider who went down hard on Tuesday June 20th in the Cat 3/4
race. I broke a rib, punctured a lung, and have a little road rash but
I'm on the mend and looking forward to getting back on my bike.

Just to clear up any misconceptions about what happened in the crash I
thought I would give a brief description from my perspective. I came
around the last corner in the top 20 or so and was feeling pretty good
so I thought a top 10 finish was a definite possibility. As a Cat 4
looking to upgrade to 3 a top 10 is a great result, I did it earlier
this year and was looking to do it again. I was getting pressed in on
my left so I tried to follow a wheel to the right to get to some open
ground. He slowed because of some none sprinters in front of him and I
overlapped wheels with him. He started to move left and I tried to
avoid hitting the riders on my left but had no where to go and touched
wheels with him. It's amazing how fast it all happens. I've thought a
lot about it over the last 2 weeks and I figure there was no fault on
anybody's part. And NO, it wasn't a case of people sprinting for 40th
place, it was just racing!

I've been riding a long time and have hardly ever crashed so it was just
my time to go down hard I guess. There was no fault and it wasn't
because of reckless/aggressive riding. Stuff happens! I'll get over it
and hopefully next time nobody will go down hard trying to gain a point
to upgrade. Racing bikes has its risks and crashing is one of them, I'm
fine with that. I wish I hadn't crashed because broken ribs aren't any
fun at all, even with the pain meds they give you, but I'll heal and be
back out there as soon as I can.

Dan
The Bike Peddler
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Daniel A. Antonson
dantonson@fastmail.fm

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http://www.fastmail.fm - IMAP accessible web-mail