London 2 Paris - By any means necessary

I just explained it to my coach in google chat..

me: oh
right
yeah so i'm up the back like a muppet
fuckers are on and off the brakes every 10secs
i miss one of them... the braking bits that is
and i take the 'nice' option of not also slamming on my brakes coz i don't know who is behind me
so.. instead of braking hard i just ease em on and ride up the outside
only the outside isn't much of a gap at all and in fact there is a big solid edge to the grass verge from car wheels when wet or something
so i hit that and flip over
nice
nothing wrong with that
but the fucking bike goes over me and lands straight in the canal!
i scramble up and all i can see is the front wheel
so i lean over to grab it and basically just slide in
one arm on the wheel holding bike, one holding grass edge
i can't see shit
i don't even know if anyone was behind me and saw
it
there was luckily
moto rider shat himself and helped me out
got back on bike and chased
mind you.. we were doing 45kph on a little fucking goat track beside the canal
mental
jenny, some irish pro later told me i crashed 'professionally' haha
she was thankful i didn't just slam on the anchors too
unfortunately for me there was the big lip on the grassy bit which it rode into instead of just a nice flat gap
oh well.. made me famous
then chasing back on at 50kph+ behind the van.. i hit the deck again on a super tight corner
fuck
powertap was bent so i got wheel change and continued..

i was know by everyone as "the fish".. and got mentioned in the speeches at the end
unfortunaately it was overshadowed by a guy getting hit by a moto outrider.. he died in hospital
it was after i'd crashed and we'd regrouped
i was already at the lunch break and i think a bunch had been caught at a level crossing.
he hit diesel and went down and the moto couldn't avoid him
emma davies announced his death to the riders..
all very upsetting which spoilt it a bit
this was after riding into paris though which was amazing!
road closure on sat night riding along the champs elysees! past the arc di triumph and into the eiffel tower park!
awesome
Lawrence: heh
me: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3257/2625500467_36f5f2b60a_b.jpg
Lawrence: the ride was awesome?
me: yeah
everything was great except for the guy gettign hit
well.. i would have preferred not to crash
but it did give me a certain cred :)
and a story to tell
i told sven (organiser) that i wasn't going to win anything so i had to do SOMETHING interesting to blog about! :D