BUCS Standard Triathlon, 25 Jun 2022

A tale of my first bike crash

Before the race even started, it was already connected to a serious of unfortunate events. The rail strike meant our team had troubles finding a way to transport our bikes (thankfully Will came to the rescue with his bicycle rack), my bike seat was stolen the night before and I woke up on the day of the race to find out I got my period a week early. Despite all of this, I was very excited to race – it was going to be my first Olympic distance event. A few injuries and intense exam term disrupted my training, so I decided to simply enjoy the race and see whether I like the longer distance.

After a brief warm up, I positioned myself on the side to have a calm swim. Overall the swim was disappointing. I had some issues with navigation and couldn’t hold higher pace for longer. Soon, the swim part was over and I entered the first transition. Due to, let’s call it: “mitigating circumstances”, I had probably the longest T1 out of all competitors (maybe it is a good thing my time wasn’t recorded in the end…)

Going for the cycle, I knew I had to make up for the awful start and push a bit harder on the bike. I adopted a new strategy which I called: “You can have this jelly if you go past that person ahead of you” which worked remarkably well. It took me about 10km to adapt to a solid pace and get used to the effort and then I was cycling past many competitors and only managed to have my jelly after 20km (which was well deserved 😊). Everything was going great until the very end of the cycling stage.

There was a downhill at which I gained quite a lot of speed. The course wasn’t marked, the main road was wide and straight, so I dropped on my aero bars and zoomed down. Suddenly, I saw one marshal standing in the bush and shouting to turn right. I misjudged the speed I was going with and tried to brake and still make the turn. As a result, I flipped over my handlebars and landed on the ground hitting the asphalt with my right arm and chin. The whole world slowed down and I wasn’t sure at what speed I hit the road and how long I was there, but I felt burning of the scratches on my arm and a huge bruise forming on my leg. I stood up pretty quickly - thankful nothing was broken - and discovered I am bleeding quite a lot from my chin. I was unsure yet whether I want to continue the race or not – I could walk and cycle, so I should be able to run, right? I was waiting for the paramedics to come and in the space of about 10-15min, I was watching the other competitors and the majority of people also missed the turn! Maybe only 3 of them managed to turn right in time, the rest cycled past and then had to go back (which I must admit is a far better strategy than sudden braking, whoops). When the paramedics came and I heard I needed to get my chin stitched, I didn’t want to risk it and decided not to finish the race.

I came back to transition zone where I met Tim and my teammates. All of them took good care of me and Tim later drove me to the hospital. Thank you very much Tim!

All in all, I was simply unlucky and sad that I couldn’t finish my first Olympic distance triathlon. I gained useful experience during the race and had a lot of fun for the first 2/3 of the route :) I am almost recovered now and am looking forward to give it another ‘tri’ 😉

Maja Radecka