Rowe Running

Falling off the wagon (or bike)

By on david triathlon

I can’t believe that in the five of six years that I’ve been getting into triathlon I’ve not come off of my bike. I’ve had a couple of close shaves and have seen a couple of nasty crashes but somehow I’ve gotten away with being the one going down. Well, until earlier this week that is!

I was out for a long ride and about 13 miles from home I was on a small country lane. It had been raining a little overnight and the roads were not fully dry. As I followed the road around a right hand bend the next thing I new was the bike had just slid out from beneath me and I was falling to the ground. I wasn’t going particularly fast at all. I thought I was being fairly cautious and had no chance to get any ‘real’ speed up as the road had lots of speed humps.

Next thing I’m sliding along the road to a standstill. The road was very smooth (which is good as it didn’t tear my £150 pound bib-shorts!) but the smoothness was no doubt a large contributor to what happened.

I pulled myself back up, picked up my drinks bottle that had ejected itself from the bike and assessed the damage. Bike - scuffed handlebars and a very scuffed right pedal (all that sliding on the road!). I took it worse than the bike by getting a large scrape on my right thigh and shoulder. I also somehow bashed my left hand/wrist as well and cut my thumb.

2013-06-war-wounds

So, as you always see if you see crashes in cycle races such as the Tour de France it was time to MTFU and carry on. Although I was much more cautious during the hours that followed I got a decent bike ride in that day.

My shoulder/thigh will bruise and scab over nicely, that’s for sure. My left wrist has taken a right knock and I got it looked at by a professional yesterday. We (well, she) thinks there’s no bone damage and its most likely just soft tissue related. I’ll give it a few days and see how it goes.

Unfortunately (I can’t believe I’m saying this!) I really cannot swim at the moment because of this. Hopefully my wrist will be better in a few days time so that I can get a pool swim in before a little race I’m doing next weekend.

© David & Sharon Rowe - rowerunning.co.uk - email me