A Beautiful Day for a Bike Race

Saturday brought sunny skies, the highest temps since last fall, and a really great day for a cycling race!  Scott's been part of Columbia's cycling team this season, and while most of his races this spring will be at other universities, this one was at Columbia here in the city, so I went to watch as the loudest-cheering wife there was.  It was a criterium race, which is a short course that's ridden several times in a given time period, so I got to see him pass by lots of times (lots of opportunities for cheers).

Not a bad place for a starting line, eh?

Possibly the main thing we learned from this race was that I am completely incapable of taking pictures at the precise time when Scott is riding by.

See Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:
Exhibit C:

And then there is this one, which I snapped on the lap right before there was a GIGANTIC BIKE CRASH RIGHT BEFORE MY EYES INVOLVING SCOTT.

Scott isn't quite sure what happened, but the two guys right in front of him went down, and he was too close to avoid them and got caught up in their crash.  All in all, there ended up being 10 or 12 guys involved!  UGH.  I don't like crashes, and I especially don't like witnessing crashes involving my husband!  (A broken collarbone would be about the worst thing right now for somebody trying to finish up clinic work to graduate from dental school in 2 months!)  In the end, Scott got away with just some crooked handlebars, but he didn't get to finish the race, which was disappointing.  However, he also has these awesome battle scars!  (I am sparing you what the actual wounds look like under that sleeve...not pretty).

But this story has a happy ending:  Though Saturday's bike race didn't go the way he had hoped, Scott totally redeemed Saturday's crash-out during Sunday's race, where he placed 9th out of 43 in his division!  So proud!