Things don't always go as planned

Today I was lucky to have this beautiful Sunday off from work. It was a perfect day for an epic ride, I hoped my  friend Johny P could come along but he had a bicycle polo game to go to which sounded fun and I can't wait to hear about it.

So about one today I left my house and start riding towards the Valley. I went my usual route which was petty normal until I hit the MUP and climb the short hill by WaterWorks Park. Normally an easy no problem climb, and I attacked like I always do, out of the saddle and powering up the hill. Today my chain decided to give. To get it out the way, yes it was properly installed and lubed, and I wasn't shifting. It hasn't the first time, this has happened 3 times before, all in the same situation, powering up a hill with a clean chain. Maybe I'm just more powerful on the climbs that I know. This derailed (pun intended) my day as I couldn't put the chain together without having it bind up. So for the first and hopefully last time i called up my out and got picked up and driven home. Pulled out my good chain tool and got everything put back together. 

So know it's 3:30 and I know I can't make it to the valley and back by the time goes down, so I decide to drive up. I pulled into the parking lot of Lock 29 and spot Sarah who I saw a couple weeks ago at the Akron Bicycle Club ride. We talk and decide to head to another parking lot where there are more parking spots and head off. We follow most of the Big Boy Valley loop and I'm feeling good. I'm flying up all the hills and feeling good. We hit Sand Run Parkway Hill and Revere Road hill. Sarah is a strong rider and holds her own the entire time and I hope we have many more miles of riding this summer. Turning onto Wheatly Road we see a rider up ahead, so I ask if she's up to sprinting up to him and getting a third in our group. This is where things got interesting.

I shift up into the big ring and start putting the power to the pedals. Get up to about 28 mph and my pedal disengages, my foot flys away from the pedal and smacks something cutting my leg. I stayed on the bike, how I'm not sure give myself and my pedals a look over clip back in and start the sprint again. Sarah saw it from behind and was surprised I stayed on. To the right is a picture of the damage. We catch up and descend down Wheatly topping out at 40 MPH. At the bottom we are all tired and finish out ride. 

Because of the things that went wrong and putting in two seperate rides the data for this ride is somewhat misleading. Riding to get picked up dropped my average speed and cadence down below to what it actually was. But overall, with all that happened I enjoyed my day greatly.

map (exluding before chain broke)

Avg. Speed-15.6

Distance- 29.03

Time-1:51:23

Avg Cadence-79 rpm

Elevation- +1008