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Collegiate Tri Nats Day 2: Raging Rapids and Tragedy Strikes
Friday, Dave and I were able to sleep in, which was awesome after the Thursday travel day. The first thing I did after I woke up was walk over to our window and open the drapes, and much to my dismay it still had not stopped raining. Most of the morning was slowly paced and relaxed, so we took advantage of our nice and accommodating Holiday Inn Express that provided us with a delicious continental breakfast. A little before noon, my mom and uncle came and picked us up to take us to the race site so we could swim and ride the course, which proved to be more difficult than expected. I had made the comment while en route to the course that I didn't think I had ever seen so much rain/water in my life. Finally, we made it to Buffalo Spring Lake Recreational Park; however, we had to reroute and enter on the opposite side of the park due to the raging rapids and flood-like conditions of the lake. Once we finally made it to the correct entrance that was not blocked by copious amounts of water, we were informed that we wouldn't be allowed to swim the course because the conditions were so dismal. Since the rainfall was so heavy at the point, we decided to hold off on our ride until later. Instead we went to the Overton Hotel to pick up our race packets.
The wait to pick up our packets was pretty short, so we were able to do what we had to do in no time. Since I thought we were going to go workout, I hadn't brought my wallet with my I.D. or USAT license. While I thought this was going to be a problem, I was luckily saved by Kelsey Labrum, who is a USAT intern from Butler that I had met over the phone earlier in the month when there was a problem with IU's registration. Since I had the hook up with the USAT higher ups, she was able to use her clout over the race volunteers to let them know I was legit. Kelsey told us the Texas Tech recreational pool was open to the public for a small fee. Dave and I made our way to the pool so that we could get in a short workout. After our swim and lunch, Dave and I attended the Captains/Coaches meeting, where the race director went over the finer details of our race. Once the race director was finished, USAT's head official spoke to the crowd about specific rules for the next day's event. When our meeting was over, we were finally able to go back to our hotel.
Upon arriving to the hotel, Dave and I changed into our cycling clothes so we could embark onto our ride we had put off earlier. By this point, the rain had reduced from a straight-up downpour to a gentle shower, but we were still met with gusting winds well above 25 mph. We started our ride from the hotel and headed west. Dave and I rode through some huge puddles on our bikes. About five to ten miles away from the hotel, disaster struck ... in the form of railroad tracks from hell. We came to a set of tracks that from far away looked like a pretty standard set, but we still slowed down to about 10 to 15 mph. Unfortunately, when we crossed over them we realized they were absolutely terrible and had gigantic divots on either side of the rails. We passed over them riding side-by-side. By the time we had both ridden across the second set of tracks, each of our back wheels where eaten up, and we each went down hard. Dave went down in front of me, while I swerved my front end to the left, and did a superman motion with my legs, landing directly on my ass. While my bike remained unscathed in the crash, sadly, Dave cracked his carbon fiber top tube and additionally his shifters snapped right off. After gathering ourselves and surveying the damage, we dismally rode back to the hotel, each of us knowing that Dave's race had just been jeopardized before he even toed the line.
After a long hot shower, and some positive thinking, Dave made the best of a difficult situation and decided he would still compete in nationals, foregoing the bike, and instead swimming and then running the course twice. Once we had each cleaned up, my folks drove over to pick us up to take us out for dinner. At about 7 p.m., the rain finally subsided. We found a nice Italian restaurant called Orlando's, which I have to say had a great atmosphere coupled with delicious food. We drove back to the hotel after dinner, so that we could get to bed earlier, for we had to wake up early the next morning.
Jordan Bailey is a junior majoring in History. He rides for the Black Key Bulls.
