Z Lefty

Nationals did not go as expected.

The drive out went fine. We left about 2 hrs late...which is on time in OSU Cycling World...and drove in to the night. We stopped halfway at a random motel and then pushed on the next morning to Lawrence, Kansas.

The time trial was...interesting. It went pretty well and we ended up 11th out of 16ish teams. Seeing as we never practice our TTT, that's pretty good! Laura, my teammate, and I had a little spat of aggresion in the middle, but the good kind. You know, the kind where I yell at her to motivate her and she yells back. Hilarious at the time and even more hilarious when she apologized afterwards for yelling back!

And then...the road race. I got dropped four times, but chased back on each time. It was a tough course and the ladies I was racing against were TOUGH. 6 miles to go and there was a HUGE pile up. Two girls locked bars on the far right of the road and when they unlocked, one of them slid all the way to the left side of the road taking out the back half of the field. Carnage was everywhere!

I ended up with a broken collarbone, a stubbed toe, and a bit o' road rash. Nothing too major considering a few of the girls were unconcious and being lifeflighted to Kansas City! I hope I can post my x-rays because they're spectacular. I broke my right collarbone (yes, I'm right handed) in three places. It kind of crumpled in to a Z shape. Pretty cool looking! It even silenced my doc for a good 10 seconds!

I had surgery to sraighten it out last Friday. I now have a plate in my chest and we think I might be magnetic! How sweet would that be...

I'm recovering pretty well. I'm weaning myself off the drugs and I can take the arm out of the sling for a few hours at a time. My family has all been so nice and been visiting this week. Mom and Gam came up yesterday and wore me out. Those youngins were just tearing around town. Lunch AND a grocery store trip! Oh my! It's amazing how easily you get worn down with a major injury. I should be back to normal in a few weeks, though it may be a few more before I can carry heavy loads.

Hopefully this won't effect our departure date. As of right now, we're still planning on leaving June 28. It may affect how soon we can climb mountains once we get there, but that's ok. I'm willing to be flexible considering how much worse this could have been.

Yours truely,
Z Lefty