Hurtle Team Racing - Ouch!

So at our last race meeting for the year, I did what I guess is inevitable, and fell of the Pantah. 

All speculation that I'm not going hard enough can now cease, whether I'm as quick as some of the good guys or not, I'm going as FAST AS I CAN GO. There are no end to the excuses I could make, but the long and the short of it was that I tried to go just a little bit faster through turn 7 than this rider, on that bike, on that day could go.

You can look forward to a post about safety gear. Suffice it to say that I gave the helmet enough of a crack that I've retired it, and that my leathers are scruffed up a bit. All in all it's a good outcome when you can come back from it and finish the day's racing. Some track side repairs were given by my competitors, and final bush engineering applied by the Ghost Rider, and off I went again.

It's now 9 days later and I still have what might be regarded as twinges. The crash was a low side, I washed out the front and fell pretty much without warning. Turn 7 is more than a right angle corner, so in the scheme of things we weren't going fast. The safety gear did its job. The length of time it's taking to put this all behind me brings us to the question of my own preparedness for the racing.

I'm in my 6th decade and consider myself reasonably fit, but nothing I do prepares me to take a knock like that. For years I went all sorts of places with my kids and got engaged in what might be called silliness, and possibly a bit of rough housing. That's all behind me now, even camping is a fairly sedate affair. I need to get back into circumstances that might give me a bit of a biff in the ribs, or a knock against things. I'm thinking swimming in the surf and mountain biking could be the next couple of pursuits I take up, to keep fitness, strength, and toughness to the levels required for the track.

The other option is to let all the softness overcome me and confess that I'm really a big sook. That can't happen. The prescription here, for me and for bunches of us, must be - HTFU.

I've attached a photo of the rash on the bike, because the photo of me with the bruises is less pretty than you deserve to see.