Sep-19: First "Irregulars" Crash

Sep-19:

PUE: Ruin Wall - Bearpond - Bobbitt - Franklinton; w/ Smitty + (LeeD, NT, BobH for ~ 39 m.); 72.2 m.; est 3125 ft ---> effort = 103; 4hrs, 30min; 16.1 mph.

1st Qt. tot: 20 rides; 755.3 m.; 47 hrs, 31 min; 15.9 mph.
2nd Qt. tot: 43 rides; 2124.3 m.; 134 hrs, 59 min; 15.7 mph.
Jul tot: 16 rides; 732.2 m.; 45 hrs, 3 min; 16.2 mph.
Aug tot: 11 rides; 709.7 m.; 45 hrs, 0 min; 15.8 mph.
Sep tot: 8 rides; 442.8 m.; 27hrs, 44 min; 15.9 mph.
YTD: 98 rides; 4764.3 m.; 300 hrs, 25 min; 15.9 mph.

Rolling 12-mos.: 122 rides; 5864.5 m.; 366 hrs, 47 min; 16.0 mph.

The impact from Friday's ride on this ride was non-existant, as best I could tell.

However, there was an "impact" on today's ride. ;-)

The first 31.9 miles of the ride were great -- even climbing the Ruin Wall was okay.

The last 40.3 miles of the ride were pretty good, considering.

The 17 yards in between, however, were not so good.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I received an e-mail from one of the female "Irregulars" -- a real stretch to categorize her as an "Irregular". Core text of her e-mail follows. Sent Oct-13-2009:
I can’t believe you would still be able to ride like that after the crash. Maybe you were still in shock! Your speed was fast, too for that length of time. You have been doing some pretty serious mileage considering your crash. You are crazy! AND you did the Ghoston-Peed MVC route back to PUE! Yikes! That’s hard even on the best days! I don’t think I would have done it, I think I would have resorted to the phone call for help!

Anyway, I’m glad you are still back in the saddle!

Response: Oct-13-2009:
What's the old poem?

Girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice.
Boys are made of snails and puppy dog tails.

Or something like that.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I would expect that you would have made a call. As would have many if not most others.

But nothing was broken. The shoulder was not dislocated. I did an analysis of what hurt and why. Put the two fingers back in place (probably still in a bit of shock when I did that). Took stock of everything, and everything still worked. As usual, those not hurt were more worried about the superficial damage just below the knee. Why were they worried about that? Because there was blood. I sometimes have trouble dealing with the blood of others, but I seem to do pretty well about not over-reacting to my own blood coming from superficial cuts and scrapes.

Making the legs work was a good way to get the muscles to recover and not allow them to stiffen up unnecessarily.

I basically rode in an easy gear (39/19) that I couldn't shift out of, and pedaled along in a combination soft-pedal / spinning action. Many times I was topped out in speed, but my downslope gravity advantage, hard work downslope is pretty much a waste of e ffort for me -- i.e., my downslope speeds were barely impacted.

I started out really easily. Going 12, 13, 14 mph for the first four miles or so. And gradually going a bit faster between Gill and Bobbitt, but that is a false flat downslope, so it is easy to carry more speed than one is pedaling. But I must have averaged better than 17 from Bobbitt back to PUE in order to average 15.9 for the entire post-crash mileage.

The upslopes on the 35 miles from Floytan Crossroads to the bottom of Ghoston are not bad -- or at least I can do them without going to the 25 tooth gear in the back if I decide to keep the cadence up (unfortunately, since I have a 25-tooth gear, I am prone to using it when I would probably do better in the long run to use the 21 or 19). The climb from the Sims Bridge Tar River crossing up to West River Rd is a climb that I would likely have done in the 39/19 anyway. The rollers on Pokomoke Rd are not that bad, although sometimes I seem to make them seem bad, and I am glad it was not a hot day in July or August when I crashed -- because that would have made a fair bit of the ride back HOT due to lack of shade and lots of sun.

My left shoulder did hurt whenever I moved my left hand on the handlebar -- which I try to move every few minutes to minimize the possiblilty of numbnes s and long-term carpel tunnel type damage. The shoulder really hurt whenever I had to stop -- because during the last bit before stopping and as one stops, one is no longer balancing the bike, but holding the bike up with one's arm and shoulder muscles. (If you don't believe the previous sentence, I can describe an experiment that will convince you -- unfortunately, the preparation for the experiment entails some likelihood of a broken collar bone or dislocated shoulder, or at least a badly bruised shoulder. ) The shoulder also hurt when I would re-start after a stop-sign or stop-light -- but by the time we got back to PUE, I had gotten much better about instantly balancing the bike upon restarting and the last couple restarts caused no extra pain. And although I think I got better in my stopping motion, stopping hurt every time that day.

When Smitty and I got back to PUE, except for my shoulder, I felt like I could have ridden another 30 miles no problem. The result of pedaling an easy gear, I think.


Here is an interresing tidbit. Although I landed on the back-top of my shoulder (see the photo on the blog), and never had any pain in the front shoulder / chest area, I got some really nice bruising that left me with a purple pectoral for about a wee k. The discoloriing is in rapid retreat now, but there is still a lot of purple around my pectoral area.

There was one time when the front of the shoulder / upper left chest area did hurt. Sunday a week later, when Lt. Dave dragged me through a 100k, I stood out of the saddle -- possibly there was a good cycling reason for standing, but mostly I stood (which I seldom do) simply to find out what the shoulder, etc. would feel like / do. There was obviously some muscle damage in that front left chest area because there was an instant sensation of pain. A sharp pain, not a dull ache. But the pain was mild, if that makes sense. Perhaps better described as a mild, localized pain, not an ache.

I have now written about this once or twice or thrice too often. Time to put it into the blog and be done with it.

Don't be surprised if an edited version of the above shows up as part of the main text for the crash ride blog entry.

Ride fast, but more importantly, ride safely.