The crash of November 2011

I am approaching the one year anniversary of my most heinous crash.  I'm fairly confident it wouldn't have been impressive to see, but it impacted me, in more than just a physical way.

On the day before Thanksgiving, I planned with my wife that I would go on a short mountain bike ride in the morning prior to our driving up with the kids to visit my folks in the Santa Barbara area.  I went out at 7-ish, planning to be home by 8:10.  I left, quite thankful for my loving wife who lets me play on my bike.

Off I went, up Black Mountain, down a fairly technical rocky section, across a connector trail, and began doing the bottom half of Miner’s Ridge Loop.

Some of you know I commute on the dirt to get to work sometimes.  Well, this is part of my route, so I knew it fairly well.  I knew when rocks were moved, water bars were changed, even small rock piles were disturbed.  I was comfortable.  At one point, there is this super-fun stretch of smooth single track, after which you bear right, and go straight down a lightly rutted trail, which is followed by a 8” drop and some twists that need to be navigated.  I probably had more speed than I am usually comfortable with when I got to the top.  No big deal.  Coming down the hill.  Approaching the 8” drop.  Shift right, get nervous, catch front wheel on small tree, handlebars turn, and WHAM!

Now I am on the ground, in front of my bike, making loud whiny moany noises.  I have fallen on my bike before, and the mental checklist starts firing: what hurts?  Nothing right now.  Stay conscious?  Think so.  Short term memory?  I need to be home by 8:10.  Okay, let’s roll over and OWWWW, maybe not.  Lay back down,  Catch breath.  Try again, maybe I just need to go this WAAAHHHHH.  Okay, maybe not.

I repeated this admittedly poor strategy for quite some time.  I finally looked at my phone (not broken!  Yay!) and checked the time.  8:02.  Hmph.  I suppose it’s time call my wife.  I’m about to call, and happy dog comes up to me, his owner right behind him.

“Are you okay?”

“no.”

“Do you need some help?”

“Yes.”

He turned out to be Steve my Rescue Guy with his trusty but kinda goofy dog Juno.  Steve turned out to be Dr. Steve, an ER doctor at Grossmont.  (More to be thankful for!)  Did I mention he's a veteran who was in Iraq?  What a coincidence! (note: that was sarcasm)  He helped me slowly to my feet.  I got up, leaned on him, and would take three steps sideways, then pause to rest.  I did call my wife.  She called me back.  I stayed chipper on the phone.  Then I called my friend Steve W who has helped me out before.  

So, we’re moving slowly, Juno is getting into trouble and trying to collect ticks, and it’s just slow.  Dr. Steve tells me my options:

·         Hobble down

·         Call the paramedics

·         Get a fireman carry

In my head, they all sound quite painful.  Dr. Steve eventually leaves to put his trusty happy dog Juno in his car so he doesn’t become a tick banquet.

So I stand there.  Ow.

He got back, and broke a couple branches into homemade crutches.  He wheeled my bike, while I hobbled along like Edward Woodenhands.  Moments later, a man with headphones comes up behind us walking his dog.

Man: “Are you gonna move?!”

Dr Steve: “Actually, he’s kinda hurt.”

Man: “Oh.  I’ll make my way around then.”

Dr. Steve: “We could use some help.”

Man: “Looks like you got everything under control.”  Wanders off

Dr. Steve: grumble grumble

So, we continue another seven or eight yards, me flailing my trunk-arms, Dr. Steve being unbelievable patient, asking standard doctor questions: “You have kids?  Plans for Thanskgiving?”

Two mountain bikers show up from behind. 

MTBR#1: “Can we pass?”

Dr. Steve: “He’s hurt.”

MTBR#2: “That’s why I always walk those sections.”

Dr. Steve: “We could use some help.”

MTBR#1 rides off.  MTBR#2 is about to ride off, saying “Good luck!”

Dr Steve: “DON’T YOU THINK YOU GUYS COULD HELP?!”

MTBR#2:”Oh.  Yeah, sure.  What can we do?”

We then begin trying a number of contortions, but finally settle on one guy under each armpit, and one guy carrying my legs under his arms while he faces forward.

This helped.  A lot.  We made fairly good progress.  Steve W my buddy showed up, gave me a Pepsi and a granola bar.    So the four of them got me to the Y of Miner’s Ridge, and then they lifted me onto the bike.  Really.  They pushed me up hills, and helped guide me while I braked downhills, and we got back.

Needless to say, I am fantastically grateful to all four of them.  As they carried me, I was a little embarrassed they had to carry me, but so thankful that it wasn’t painful, and we were making progress. 

We parted ways, I got their numbers so I could buy them beers, bring them cookies, change their oil, scrape their calluses, whatever.

Steve my buddy drove me home to get some clothes, then off to urgent care.  I was in fairly quickly.  Sit down.  In the gown, off to X-Rays.  My hip felt awful, and, hey my elbow feels a little hinky too.

That horizontal line halfway up?  The fact it sticks out on the bottom?  Yeah/

Get the X-Rays, and back to my room.  Turns out I cracked my left iliac wing on my pelvis.  This means no surgery.  Lots of pain, yes, surgery no.  Yay!  Also, the elbow was broken after all.  Really?  And I need a cast.  Ah well.  Better to heal now then face ugly stuff down the road.

So, my wife picked me up, and I called my GP.  He could get me in for a cast right away.  I went there, and they wheeled me right in.  He looked at the x-rays, prescribed some meds, and said “You don’t need a cast.”  Yay!  He then texted a picture to his buddy who is an orthopedist to verify.  The orthopedist texted right back that, no, I don’t need a cast.  Again, very thankful!

I got home, hobbled up to my room.

My kids were very sad that we couldn’t go to the grandparents.  They had their stuff packed and they were ready, but then we couldn’t go because of daddy.

My son then proceeded to invent a board game which we played, and my daughter enjoyed being my nurse and taking care of me. 

Thanksgiving night I spent at home, but I sent my family to my buddy Steve’s place for dinner.  I thought about all the people, the medical care, the passersby, my family, and oh so much I have to be thankful for.  I am truly blessed. 

The first time I tried to go to the bathroom from the bed, it was a 20 minute round trip.

I did manage to record the ride on Strava:



Now, you may ask, what lesson did I learn?  My wife will tell you that she learned not to let me ride just before we go on vacation.  I learned way more than that.  I learned the practical: If I see someone on the ground, I stop.  No question.  Beyond that, I stop whenever I see someone in trouble.  The whole ride-past-yelling-"You okay?"-with-no-intention-to-stop is long gone.

However, much more than that, I learned that sometimes, I need to let others help me.  There are things I can't do on my own.  As it says in Romans 12, we are all members of a body in Christ, and we belong to all the others.  I can't do it all myself.  Eyeballs are amazing, but they aren't very good at hearing.  In this case, I was a (non)walking lesson of needing others to be my feet.   It is often easier to help someone else, but there are things and tasks which I was not designed to do.

Here's the part that some folks would raise an eyebrow at: I think God may have wanted this to happen.  Not just allowed it, but wanted it.  He used it to train and teach me, and to train and teach my family.  It may have already prevented me from doing something else.   God is in control.  Good thing, because if I really were in control, things would go waaaaay worse.

 

50 Mile MTB Marathon, part III: Riding as fast as I did

Read part I here and part II here.

I now had two tires filled with air.  Whoo-hoo!

Off I went.  Due to the endless craziness, I was at the rear of everything.  No matter, there is something that is very motivating about passing people.  Sure, that meant I was behind them, but it also meant that I could go faster than someone. 

After leaving the first aid station, I had a mere 40 miles to go.  I had spent a fair amount of time standing around, and my legs had become cold.  Not mean and uncaring, mind you.  More like, "Hey, this pedaling stuff...how does it work again?"  Thankfully, the next 10 miles were darned flat.  I need to add a modifier to "flat" because in San Diego, there is no flat.  You can climb 1000 feet going up and down the coast.  And that's on the flat section.

This so-called flat section was the section where we rode along a lake shore.  It climbed and descended, and went on some single track.  I had dropped my racing mentality, and switched over to "as fast as is reasonable."  When racing, reason is defenestrated.  When I would approach mildly technical sections, I would dismount.  What's 10 seconds?  I continued to hammer along.  The brain went into "I wonder" mode.  "I wonder when I'll see the first people coming back.  I wonder who's in the lead.  I wonder if we'll see each other and the pass will be safe.  I wonder how long it will be until I pass someone.  I wonder how many people I will pass.  I wonder if anyone will ever pass me. I wonder...."  The first person coming back toward me was not whom I expected.  He is a 50+ single speed racer.  He's really fast, don't get me wrong.  But he was all by himself, and I seriously doubted he passed and dropped all the pros doing the 100 miler.  He said, "Hey, brother," as he passed me.  Something was wrong, but he was riding fairly fast, so I decided not to check in with him.  Later, I found out he had been in a gnarly bar-tangler and broke his top tube.  That's an acceptable reason for a DNF.

I made it to aid station 2.  Yay!  A whole section!  I squeezed my tires.  Still holding!  I grabbed my refreshments, and kept going.  Remember way back in part II, the group of slow folks I had to wait to pass?  I caught them again.  We were starting to see oncoming traffic, so I waited.  Finally, I had the chance to pass, and pass I did.  I started counting people.  I got to about, oh, four, before that seemed silly.  I got to the switchbacks, which have post-and-rail fences and very tight switches, making it challenging to negotiate alone, let alone when there is opposing traffic.  We all said kind and cheering words to each other.  I gave the right of way to the racers, since it really didn't bother me to lose another 10 seconds here, another 10 seconds there.  It'll probably add up to several minutes by the end!  C'est la vie.

I continued to fly along, and caught up to someone who seemed to still be racing.  I wasn't sure why, but I chatted with him, and he was sure we were ahead of a whole bunch of folks.  I wasn't so sure.  I left him and was actually going back and forth with another fellow.  This poor guy had the noisiest brakes.  It was annoying me; I can't imagine what it would be like riding with them.  He would stop and look at them.  We rode together and chatted for a while.  Turns out his shifter broke before the first corner.  He ran back into the pits, and borrowed a demo bike.  That had a stripped out seat clamp, so he had to ride beach-cruiser style.  And the spokes were loose, which is why he was the guy whose bike was on the stand at aid station 1 when I first arrived.  I let him go ahead on the switchbacks on the way back.  We rode near each other for quite some time.  As we were on the switchbacks, I saw folks on there way out.  I encouraged best I could, but I knew they were in for a long day.  I was very impressed that they kept going, though.

Upon hitting aid station 3 (mile 30), I replenished fluids, grabbed some cookies and other munchies, and started riding.  And the back felt, sigh, squishy.  I squeezed it.  Not that bad, and it held well enough for 20 miles.  Rode back, got a pump, and pumped them up to about 40 psi.  And off I went.

I discovered something about myself in this section, that I had noticed earlier in the race, and I actually finally figured it out.  As I was riding up a climb, I started thinking about whether I could quit.  Could I have my wife pick me up?  She was taking my son to a birthday party (fishing) and I was doing the math as to where I could meet her so she wouldn't be late for the party.  I realized it was just as easy to ride all the way back, get the car, and meet them at the party.  That's when I realized it.  In the middle of non-final climbs, I get bummed out.  It had happened on the previous climb.  It had happened in other races.  I could now see it for what it really was.  Hard work, but not the final hard work.  Now that I recognized it for what it was, it made dealing with it MUCH easier.

And that was the second big lesson.  If I take the time to recognize what is really happening, and the why, it makes dealing with it much easier.  This is true for mountain bike racing, and it is also true for snapping at someone, or being offended.  When I reflect on the why, I can change the behavior by the grace of God.

After I cleared the climb, I continued to motor.  I tried to go faster, but it seemed I went the speed I went.  Immediately before the final aid station, we were directed up a single track that climbed over a small hill.  At that point, I wasn't really keen on climbing, but it was part of the course.  Coming the other way was some fellow pushing his singlespeed.  He obviously took a wrong turn.  What a silly mistake!  Luckily for him, I was there to politely explain that he could have simply stayed on the fireroad and avoided going against traffic on this single track.  He didn't seem to understand what I was telling him, but that was okay.  I'm sure he was pretty tired at that point.

I got to the end of the single track section, and looked at the posted signs.  They clearly showed that we were supposed to go the way Mr Singlespeed went.  Oops.  I would have encountered that sign immediately after my tube debacle at aid station 1.  Nevertheless, I had cut the course, and knocked literally HUNDREDS of yards off my total distance.  Next time, I will be careful in my disposition of helpful advice.

  I made it safely to the final aid station.  I was surprised to see one of the people I was wondering how I would compare to.  "Hey!  How are you?" I asked.  "Cramping."  I pumped up my tire, drank a Coke, ate an Oreo, and said, "Let's go!"  It was quickly apparent that he was in full Damage Control.  I've been there, and you often don't want company.  So off I went.  As I zipped along, I caught up with another guy I was wondering how I would compare to.  We chatted for a moment, and he was obviously dining at the Buffet of Pain and had gone back for seconds.  I rode off.

Final climb time.  I had no desire to ride up it at full effort.  Two reasons: one, I was very tired, and two, I had developed hot spots in my feet.  Like red hot pokers.  I wanted to get OUT of those pedals!  SO, I started hiking, but got back on before the summit.  I was still passing people.

I rode the final five miles, grabbed my belt buckle, and hopped in the car.  I drove over to the birthday party, and fished with my son.  I found out he had already caught one before I arrived!
After the party, we went back to the race course.  I checked the results (I had a slow time.) and grabbed an Oreo for my son.

This was the third running of this race.  It was my third time.  I am glad I completed it again.  It was not what I planned, not what I expected, but certainly a blessing.  As always, I found myself missing my family mid-race.  It always helps me realize how wonderful my family is, and how much I love them.  Will I be out there next year?


God only knows.