January 25th, 2014
Distance
103 Miles
Time
6:13:28
Route Map/Profile
Weather
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Ride Report
Things were going so well in January. The weather was great. I was slowly but steadily increasing the mileage and the climbing. 2014 might have been on pace to be my best year ever. I was riding a high.
On Wednesday I came down to earth- literally. I was riding home from work and had my right hand off of the bars to blow my nose. All of the sudden I ran over something, and before I could react I was sliding across the road on my right side.
I got up and felt fine. A few things worked in my favor. First, it was early morning, so I had multiple layers of clothing on. My skin was fine except for minor scrapes on my shoulder, elbow, and knee. Second, I wasn't expecting the fall, so I didn't have time to make the mistake of extending my right arm. So, without really thinking about it, I practiced pretty good falling technique.
As soon as I knew that my bike and body weren't badly broken, I became angry. How could I be so stupid? What the hell did I run over? Before I could calm down, a woman in an SUV asked me if I was OK. I told her I was, and she offered to give me a ride home. I'm not the nicest, most talkative guy under the best of circumstances. But here I was, angry and embarrassed, doing my best to politely tell her to get the hell away from me. I said, "I'll be fine, but thanks anyway." She wasn't having it. I was more focused on being angry. I picked my bike off of the ground and threw it in the grass, Bjarne Riis style. I wanted to see what caused the fall. I made the surprisingly long walk back and there it was- a big chunk of concrete sitting in the middle of the bike lane.
I have no idea what this piece of concrete was. Part of a sidewalk? Random construction garbage? I have even less of an idea how it got in the middle of the bike lane. All I know is that it had to go, so I picked it up and threw it in the grass as hard as I could.
Now the woman was next to my bike and she noticed that my front tire had gone flat. This gave her even more reason to want to drive me home. It took a while, but I finally convinced her that I was fine and she reluctantly went on her way. Now I had to change my front tube and the adrenaline was beginning to wear off.
At first I thought I hurt my knee. It was stiff and I could tell I had lost some skin there. As I was pumping up the tube, I began to notice that my right arm was hurting. It made sense. My arm took the bulk of the impact when I fell. By the time I was done pumping, my knee didn't hurt at all and my arm was hurting more and more. I rode super slow the rest of the way home. I was a little banged up, but I didn't think anything serious was going on.
When I got home I stripped off my layers and assessed the damage. My shoulder got the biggest scrape (my jacket was torn to pieces), but it didn't really hurt at all. My knee had the second biggest scrape and it burned a little. My elbow had a tiny little cut. The cut itself didn't hurt, but the elbow was very sore and a little swollen. Range of motion was limited. I figured it would get better with time as the swelling went down. My plan was to go to bed and see how it felt in the morning.
The pain just kept getting worse and worse. I couldn't sleep. Being on my back wasn't comfortable and being on my side hurt too much. I felt OK sitting on the couch, but eventually not even that was comfortable. I began to convince myself that my arm was broken. I finally gave in and decided to go to the doctor. There was no way I was going to ride there, so I took a 3-mile walk instead. The only semi-comfortable position for my arm was in an imaginary sling. Any slight extension of my arm or rotation of my hand hurt like hell. I felt like things were grinding when I rotated my hand. The mind has its way of playing tricks on you.
This story is already too long, so I'll just cut to the chase and tell you that the X-rays were negative. I know this is a backwards way of thinking, but I was disappointed to hear that. How could it hurt so much from just swelling? Is my pain threshold that low? What the hell is wrong with me?
I went home and was finally able to sleep a couple hours, and then it was off to work to attempt working one-handed. It was a tough day, but somehow I made it. The bad news is that my arm really didn't show any signs of improvement at all.
No matter what, I was determined to keep the century per week streak alive. Believe it or not, I was actually thinking about doing this week's ride on a recumbent. I was having an internal argument with myself on whether or not that was cheating. I'm still not sure what the answer is. However, things started to improve on Friday.
I felt good enough to ride one-and-a-half handed on Saturday. I had to keep the route flat because standing to climb still hurts quite a bit. I did 4 laps around Washoe Lake, keeping it close enough to home to bail out if necessary. The arm seemed to get a little stiff towards the end, but overall I was happy with how it held up throughout the day. I'd say my range of motion is probably 80% right now. Sudden moves still hurt. I'm happy as long as it's making progress. I can ride through the pain as long as there's an end in sight.
Stay focused out there. Don't let one moment of inattention take you down like it did to me.
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