MOMENTUM CRITERIUM #2

Today was the second criterium put on by Momentum Multisport at Kaneohe Marine Corps Base, Hawaii. Since it was originally put out that Category 5 riders should sign up for the Cat 5 race, that is what I went with this time. I later found out that I could have done the Senior race since I scored points in the last crit, but I decided to go ahead and race the Cat 5 race. Since I was dragging Goy and Damien along with me, I showed up late and missed the Expert and Senior races. We got there just as the Womens race was starting.

It was a little windy for our race but still a nice day for racing and we had a pretty good size group for our race.

Here we are getting ready to start.

A group of 5 or 6 of us got out front early as the lead group.

I took a flyer off the front and opened up a pretty good gap.


I think I stayed away for about 3 or 4 laps.

Here is my #1 fan...but don't ask him, he'll tell you a different story.

I was doing great in the race and was set up for a top finish for sure until about 3 laps from the finish I noticed something going wrong. As I put pressure on my left crank, I noticed my foot was turning. I thought the tension in my pedals was allowing my cleat to slip, then I thought my pedal was coming out of the crank arm. When I looked down I saw what the problem was. I had broken the crank arm and I was bending it as I put pressure on it. Since I only had about one more lap to finish by the time I figured this out, I decided to go ahead and finish. So, I ended up pedaling about the last four laps with a broken crank arm and did the last lap basically one-legged. Despite all this, I didn't finish too far behind the lead group.

Here are some pictures of what my crank looked like after the race.

I did talk to a friend of mine who works at the store where I bought the bike and he said they will replace it since it looked like a manufacturer defect. I plan to take it by there tomorrow during lunch.