This evening I chose to ride my CX training course at the local school. Normally, I have only trained up there on Sunday mornings when there is no one around. My hunch was that there would be quite a few people milling about, especially with the nice weather.

When I showed up, cars were filing into the parking lot for football practice. The usual number of walkers and joggers were on the track, too, along with a few kids on the playground. It was a busy place but I still got in a few good laps before settling in to do a little practice of my mounts and dismounts.

One thing is clear, I need to spend a day doing concentrating on just that technique. I was surprisingly bad tonight probably because I was practicing a few different things. Twice, I crashed.

The first was probably rather comical for anybody watching. I unclipped my right foot, swung the leg around and the next thing I know the bike is leaning WAYYYY to far to the right. My right hand has nothing to grab and I am leaning to the left trying to correct the situation. I imagine I looked like Hincapie at Roubaix when his handlebars snapped. After about 10 ft, my left foot finally unclipped and down I went.

Part of my course is a couple curbs on either side of a walkway as small little barriers. I'm still unsure what happened on the second crash. Maybe I clipped the curb with my foot. All I can recall is sprawling forward, trying not to land directly on the opposite curb. My upper body reached the grass. My legs did not. I sit here with a cut knee and some light road rash just below the hip joint and the outside of the calf on my left leg. Also, my right calf must have been whacked by the bike as it tumbled over me because it is really stiff. Tomorrow it will probably be bruised.

After the Keystone Kops routine, I decided to chill out and just ride around for a while.