Bad luck

I thought things were looking up but not today. I was able to get the big bike case through the Metro system to airport without much hassle. I checked the bike and one bag for free because I had the special free bike travel certificate. I arrived on time in Orlando and got my luggage quickly, waited 5 minutes and Orion was at the curb. The weather was nice and I had some decent food.

I put the bike together this morning with the fancy 808 race wheels. I swam in the local pool at the housing area which was fine just for an easy 15 minutes. I proceeded to head out the door to do my taper bike for the day. The roads here don't have shoulders in certain areas but there is a bike path. I was going to follow the bike path and then cut over to this newer area which does have a shoulder to shake out the bike. The wheels felt fast as I was just slowly going into a pretty good headwind. I came up to my turn onto this busy road. I was still on the sidewalk but I needed to get onto the road. A entry for some shops was coming up so I decided to look back and see if there were cars...that's when it happened. I saw a van coming so I started to look forward again but I had drifted way left. The bike handling is so fast that I had drifted left looking over my left shoulder. This combined with the wind and the deep wheels and I was already at the edge of the sidewalk. The sidewalk was veering to the right. I was going off the sidewalk into the nicely edged grass = big crevice to suck my entire front wheel. I knew what was going to happen before my wheel went off and I had already started cursing. I should've just tried to peddle into the grass but it was thick Florida grass about 5 inches tall. My front wheel slide of the sidewalk and I was going down. I was only going about 10mph so the road rash isn't too bad. A little on my elbow and the side of my knee. I bonked my helmet and scratched the crap out of my aero brake lever, right pedal and right aero shifter.

I just can't catch a break. My elbow is a little sore and swollen but I'm hoping it's all better by Sunday. The swim will be interesting with road rash. Again it could've been worse. I keep thinking about the article I read that the accomplishment is getting to the start line of an Ironman. If I can just get to start line of the Ironman in August without all this stuff that I'll have at the start of Sunday's Half, I'll be grateful.

The only good news is my foot is feeling a little better as I ran off the bike for 20 minutes and it wasn't too bad.

3 days..