Quote Originally Posted by Eden View Post
If you absolutely *cannot* crash anymore because of your back, I'd suggest going for a different competitive route than road racing.... Challenge yourself in other ways, try non-competitive rides, if those aren't challenging enough, look into randonneuring and ultra distance events, do time trials or triathlon, but avoid pack racing.

No one wants to go into a racing event with the mindset that you will crash... then you will.... but you do have to be realistic that it is quite possible, in fact probable to inevitable that if you race with any sort of consistency and you are actually competitive (in other words not always directly off of the back and alone) that you will at some point be involved in a crash. While I'm sure that the impacts are less than in a motorsport crash, not every tumble is as benign as patching up road rash. If you are fragile in any way, you can still get hurt and being obsessively conservative, perversely will likely put you in a position where it is actually more likely that you'll be caught up when crashes do occur...
Great team you have there Eden. How awesome!!!! Such inspiration.

Unfortunately crashing is always the furthest thing from my mind which can be a good thing and a bad thing, even with my back. I've been trying to train for a century ride to see if I can make it and I think I am going to try a local low key crit as well. We will see.