Or make that “on the comeback road” – first ride in six weeks!
Most serious cyclists, and indeed also some not-so-serious ones, will know the feeling of being fit, then getting badly injured, and having to fight back to fitness.
We all get injured sometimes. There are those little niggles which are worrying at first, and then fade. Or there are the little niggles that turn into something really disruptive and difficult to get rid of. And then there are proper spills, involving broken bones, separated shoulders, torn tendons and ligaments.
I actually count myself relatively lucky that I managed almost 10 years mountain biking before properly crocking myself. But last year I took a flyer while riding in truly apocalyptically awful February UK rain and cold, and sprained my ankle really badly – the kind that puts your foot about 90 degrees sideways out of its usual position and leaves you in a cast for six weeks.
And then this year, second year running for a big stack, it was collarbone time. It happens to lots of us at one time or another: all cyclists can name numerous mates who’ve done theirs; a nice chap from the German Rohloff team at the Absa Cape Epic had done his nine times (nine! His shoulders were criss-crossed with operation scars); and the collarbone fairy even got Lance in the end.
This was how mine went. It’s a bit of fun to have it captured on film, even though I still have to grit my teeth a bit when I watch it.
There’s a real adjustment process you go through when something like this happens. I’m sure some psychologist will have made his millions describing this process in some book or thesis, but for me it has involved a change in plans from:
– Do really well in the Absa Cape Epic, get home and have my strongest ever early season on the road, top 10 at Original Source Mountain Mayhem (the UK’s biggest 24-hr MTB race), then see what comes for the rest of the season.
To:
– Kiss goodbye to that finish spot at the Absa Cape Epic, maybe plan on doing a road race or two in the summer but let go of my Cat 1 licence, see if I am up to doing Mountain Mayhem and if so treat it as training, then hopefully target some races in July. Races in July potentially including the Transalp – watch this space…
I think it helps having had big injuries in the past. As well as the aforementioned sprained ankle, I got hit by a car in 2006 while riding through London after the regular Tuesday night Crystal Palace crits. That was a good six months of rehab for a partially torn patellar tendon (the one that holds your kneecap onto your lower leg, anatomy fans). So at least this time I can console myself with the fact that bones are a lot better at healing than tendons or ligaments, and that therefore surely this can’t take as long as that.
Anyway, I’ve at least taken the first steps: the sling is off, I’ve progressed from not really being able / wanting to do anything active at all to sitting on the turbo one-handed, then two-handed, and then, big milestone, actually getting on a bike outdoors for the first time in six weeks this last weekend.
What a feeling – to be outdoors, riding in the sunshine in the hills south of London. Shame about the total absence of fitness. Still, luckily I know that that comes back quickly too, from past experience. It’s a lot faster getting back to a previous peak than trying to get up to a new one.
The future isn’t all necessarily rosy – the doctor could yet say at my check-up this week that it isn’t as fixed as I thought it was, and that I was crazy for riding my bike. But it felt good all the same.