The next day I went for a long bike ride with two friends. I’d gone close to 15 km when I was challenged by a rogue insect. I turned my head one way to avoid him but when I turned back he was still there. I turned my head to the right and lost control. My last thought as the bike went straight into a bank of alders was “don’t fight it, just fall” and my first thought after the crash was “I bet that looked hilarious!” Still, I was surprised to find myself pinned between the bike and bushes, lower body a bit higher than the rest of me. Burning pain in my right thigh had me scared — it felt like it was ripped open — and I really didn’t even want to think about the rest of me.
R hollered — “J—! Are you OK?”
“I’m in the ditch.” I laughed and cried as I tried to get up. No luck.
The girls helped to disentangle and get me out of the bushes. They were sure I’d fainted because I didn’t scream or anything on my way into the crash, just seemed to turn and drive directly into the bushes. I checked my legs. The right wasn’t ripped open, but the skin was stretch all to hell. The left thigh was already swelling a bit but everything was moving fine. The only blood anywhere was from a blackfly bite. I couldn’t believe my luck and sat down in the middle of the trail where I laughed and laughed for five minutes. Seriously. There were grass stains on my helmet. The bushes looked like shit. And there I sat with barely a scratch.
After a few minutes, we got back on our bikes and decided to keep going. By the time I got home I’d gone about 32 km (about 20 miles), burnt the shit out of my shoulder and had this blooming on my left leg:
Sexy, huh? Amazingly, there’s only a slight shadow where that exclamation mark used to be.
I kept riding my bike, zipping out after work more and more often, even talking to a cycling guru about about cleaning my bike, chain, etc etc. And it made a huge difference. I was pumped, loving my bike rides…and then, suddenly, ten days after the crash I started having pain in my upper back. Persistent pain that started out feeling like a tiny knot and developed into something I couldn’t figure out. I kept going, figured it would work itself out, but eventually gave in and went for treatment. Turns out the joint between two vertebrae was irritated by my crash. My physio guy has been awesome and his colleague got me in when I had a flare up last week while he was on vacation. Things are A LOT better now and I went out this afternoon for my first ride in about three weeks. Yep, on vacation. I’m feeling pretty awesome about it right now and am looking forward to a HUGE ride tomorrow. Can’t wait.
Here’s the thing, though — the first leg of today’s trip was somewhere beyond awful. Not because I was in pain but because I felt horribly, horribly out of shape. I wanted to bike as hard as I did a few weeks ago but I couldn’t. I started out too hard, pedaled like crazy and after only a kilometre or two had to stop. It was pouring, I was soaked, scared of falling and following my sister who is slim and strong. My chest ached and I couldn’t quite catch my breath. We stopped under a couple of leafy tress and I squawked for a few minutes. I was almost crying with frustration. It was awful. E convinced me to drink some water while we were talking and as I guzzled water I realized that I’d been hydrating with diet pepsi for two days. One glass of water. That’s it. I immediately started to feel better but I was still pissed. We biked a bit farther, stopped again, watched some ducks…got going again and finally reached out destination. A bit of lunch and a lot of water later, we headed for home with a small load of groceries. The trip back was AWESOME and I’m really looking forward to tomorrow’s trip.
Oh, and bungee on Monday.
