Biking weekend - good and not so good ...

I was pumped about riding after finishing a 4 hour clinic with Alex Stieda, former Tour yellow jersey wearer (1st North American actually), on Saturday -
and best of all it was free. (My city hosted the World Masters Games last year, not sure if there was leftover money or something, but they had a series of "Masters Training Clinics" in various sports).

I was a bit nervous ahead of time , hoping that everyone else wasn't super-experienced/strong/super fast riders and that I'd feel out of place ... especially when the first few who arrived were talking about their Ironman tri experiences, but then a lady arrived in jeans, so I knew I wouldn't be the weakest in the group.

The clinic covered a lot of areas - climbing, corners, descending, sprinting, riding in a group - got more experience and some tips, improved my confidence (I only got my road bike in May so still a little nervous sometimes on the skinny tires), overall a great experience. And "Alex" was very friendly and made everyone feel comfortable (even the lady in jeans who ended up walking up most of the hills, she almost went home before it started but he encouraged her to stay and at the end she felt she had learned a lot).

Not sure if I'm more excited about the clinic itself or the fact I've now met and ridden with a former Tour yellow jersey! There's a good account on Cycling News by Davis Phinney about Stieda's ride in 1986 that got him the jersey.

Then today (Sunday), Ed and I went riding with a friend from prior running clinics. It was a nice fall day, sunny and warm, and we had a really good ride. Then something happened that I'm sure looked an awful lot worse from the perspective of those around me than it seemed from my perspective - my first (and hopefully last) bike crash into a car. It happened so fast I'm not entirely sure what all transpired, but I'm fairly sure that the reason I didn't stop before crossing a street was because I thought the car was not turning my way by their signals. By the time I realized that they *were* in fact coming my way, I was almost but not quite able to stop in time - my front wheel hit the car and turned and I went down. I was pretty quickly able to get off the road to avoid any further problems - I'm sure the driver of the car was pretty traumatized but Ed was able to reassure them I was ok. And I was - gash on one leg, bruising/muscle strains on the other leg. Amazingly enough, my bike was fine (Ed thought from his perspective that I'd actually hit the car myself and my bike had been run over).

To tell the truth, I think this is much less of a confidence-shaker than some previous crashes when I really wasn't doing anything much - then you start to wonder "how can I do difficult stuff if I crash on the easy stuff?". Whereas with this, I think blame was on both sides (I should have stopped to be sure where the car was going, and they should have signalled better and not have been going so fast), but at least there was a reason for the crash so mentally I'm feeling fine about riding still :-) .