DNS

Tonight I went to PIR intending to race. Sort of.

I'd told myself all week that I wanted to race tonight, that I wanted to be able to say I'd raced every week no matter what.
Then:
-- yesterday I led a group ride and put 20 miles in on a hot day;
--this morning I sat through a meeting at work that felt futile and interminable;
--today's high reached 90F;
--and tonight when I got to PIR and saw the course that Tad had laid out, any remaining enthusiasm sort of went out the window. It was ridiculous. Tad races Cat I and designed a course for his level. Anyone else out there would just have to suck it up and truly suffer. And I could already tell I wasn't in the mood to suffer.

Still, I told myself to get out there and do a pre-ride. I made it around about a third of the course and knew that I would not have enough to do more than a lap or two. By then, I was looking for any excuse to get out of racing -- the idea that simply deciding not to race was somehow not sufficient.
Around the next turn, into what seemed like a tenth set of rollers, I got what I'd asked for. Dropping down off a steep embankment, my front wheel hit a small boulder/rock/dirt clod -- and the shock wave of the jolt moved through the bike and jammed my left wrist. I stopped, winced, pulled off the course, waited a few minutes for the pain to subside and then rode around to the back side, out on the "Back Forty", to see if the hard, bumpy ground would aggravate it or if I could keep riding.
It hurt enough for me to notice and I decided I'd rather save it all for the last race of the series next week. So I scratched, told Kris I was DNS ("Did Not Start"), feeling a combination of shame and relief.
I stayed awhile, helping out here and there and taking some pictures, but not feeling terribly thrilled. I left a little after 7:30 and called it a night.

I will hope for a better, less stressful week next week.