First ride back

From Blog Pictures

Went on a 2 hour easy paced road ride with Josiah on Saturday. I turned to talk to him at one point and he was taking a picture. Haha.

Just like most injuries the left shoulder started to feel good after a little work. It got loose and the blood got pumping and that helped me feel better. However after the ride it started to get stiff again and was a little more painful than usual.

Despite the minor pain I was super-duper excited to be back on the bike. It was a great day to ride and I enjoyed every minute of it. Planning to ride road for a while before trying a bigger ride in the dirt this Saturday.

Great News!

Finally got into the doctor yesterday after re-scheduling the appointment a few times. They took some new x-rays and immediately after the x-rays the doctor asked me if I had actually broken my left clavicle. I was surprised but excited by the question. What if I hadn't broken it? I could ride right away!

He did some tests by having me move my left arm around and after each test he would ask if I felt any pain. I was feeling fine until he did this one test where I had to push with my arms in an outward fashion. That hurt.

He looked a bit closer at the new x-rays and saw that I had cracked my clavicle in the area around the sternum (towards the middle of my chest).

All that to say I don't need a sling and I don't have to worry about how it's going to heal. No surgery and hopefully no loss in my range of motion. Just take it easy and in his words, "don't do anything where you might fall."

I was so excited after he told me that. I had this HUGE smile on my face and laughed all the way back to my car. I stepped out of the elevator and when I found myself surrounded by three cute nurses I burped out loud and didn't even think twice about it. My mind was somewhere else.

STOKED!

Slingless

From Blog Pictures

First ride without my sling. Still stuck on the trainer.

What you see in the picture:

1. Me on my road bike in my living room.
2. Cycling tan lines. Proof that I train a lot.
3. A music stand. This has my workout list on it, a sharpie to keep track of what sets I've done and a stopwatch to time the intervals/sets.
4. A TV. Crucial to keep me from getting bored.
5. A bib and a wife beater. I'm inside so who cares?
6. Blurry legs. I'm getting faster ...

The trainer was a great purchase.

Broken collar bone

I'll put up the long version for curious people.

I was riding through Casper's on Saturday and was in a bad mood. I had spent a ton of time cleaning my bike and the area was pretty muddy. The bike got dirtier and dirtier as the day went on.

I was heading back towards the top of Star Rise after quickly hitting the end of West Ridge and as I came down a fast descent I saw a section of mud at the bottom. I tried to bunny hop over it and ended up planting my front wheel in the middle of the mud and went over the bars. It happened too fast to think. I was going very fast (had to be over 20mph) and my body just smacked on the ground mostly on my left side.

I laid on the ground for at least five minutes groaning uncontrollably. The wind got knocked out of me but when I finally was able to breath it hurt really bad. A nearby hiker came over to me and asked if I was ok. I couldn't even talk because of the pain in my chest and ribs. I just grunted and groaned and rolled on the ground.

Eventually I was able to get up but it was terribly painful in my chest. Every breath was hard to get in. I was taking a lot of short breaths the way someone would if they were hyper-ventilating.

I checked my left shoulder to see if anything was broken. It seemed to be ok because I didn't feel any acute or sharp pain. Also I had total movement in all directions so I thought "Whew ... at least I didn't break anything!"

The guy that came to help me brought me back to his buddies who were smoking weed. They helped me get my bike together, dusted me off and offered to drive me home. I knew the walk to their truck was the same distance as the ride to my house so I figured I'd just ride home.

(Honestly I've never smoked weed before, but I was in enough pain to where it was tempting. I needed something to take the edge off.)

I walked the first hill and then rode almost everything else to get home. I think it was about 6 miles and took about 30 minutes to get home.

The entire way I was moaning/groaning/grunting/coughing uncontrollably. The ribs felt crushed and I couldn't take deep breaths. I just spun away in an easy gear and tried to get back as soon as possible.

I did end up running into Dale at one of the gates on West Ridge and talked to him for a bit. Haha. I was hurt but still felt like talking to a guy I hadn't seen in a while. Also some other rider was there and thank God he was because I couldn't lift my bike over the wood barriers.

I was in heavy denial when I got home. Before my shower I noticed my left shoulder and the left side of my neck was very swollen. I knew that wasn't good but it didn't feel like a break. I was hoping to avoid going to the ER.

After making a sandwich for lunch I realized I needed to go to the ER. My chest was hurting and I was starting to shake a little. So I drove myself to Mission hospital. I had never been there and actually went to the wrong urgent care center at first. I was pretty upset because at this point the pain was getting really bad and I wanted to get treated right away.

They let me into the ER quickly when they saw I was having trouble breathing and I was shaking so bad.

It took them five hours to release me from the ER. Total damage was one broken-in-half left clavicle and some bruised ribs. I've never had an ER experience like this one before. I had the nose breathing tubes in, a heart rate monitor, a blood pressure cuff that would automatically take my pressure on timed intevals and an IV. They were worried about my internal organs and my neck since I landed on part of my head so they took an EKG, a chest x-ray and also a cat scan.

A lot of it was a blur after they pumped some painkillers in my IV.

I'm happy the bone seemed to set itself and the pain from the collar bone isn't actually that bad. The worst part is in the middle of the night I'll wake up from the pain in my ribs and I can't get back to bed without pills.

There are other details, but they aren't terribly interesting. Vision Quest is still on and I plan to get back on the trainer later this week. I got really emotional when I thought that I might miss Vision Quest. It was a tough and lonely time in the ER when I was left alone to think about what I had done and what the consequences might be. But after talking to Matt, Jason and my coach I realized I can still do the race.

So now I have some time to fix the bike (it actually is fairly ok - even after the crash) and rest. Trying to sleep a lot and I need to start seeing doctors to get going with physical therapy or whatever.

I knew it was going to happen one of these days. The timing sucks, but what are you going to do?