The Road to Recovery

Injury Day 4, back on the bike.

Two weeks ago today I suffered the worst injury I have ever had in my life and I have learned at least two things: I do not take being disabled well and I now truly know the value of a helmet. I had managed to beat up my left shoulder pretty bad in the crash with deep road rash and a lot of bruising but what concerned my wife and I the most in the first couple of days was the head injury. I’ve never suffered a concussion and just wasn’t sure what to look for.  My wife watched me closely those first couple of days mumbling to herself things like; “Well, his eyes are focused.” or “He seems to be thinking straight.” I’m not sure if I should have gone to a doctor or not but I have never claimed to be the wisest of men.

I remember riding out of the single track right after the crash and heading over to Body Concepts to have Rob look at my shoulder. My first thoughts were “How long until I can get back on the bike”?  (Is that an indication of cycling addiction?) I was relieved when Rob said he did not believe there was any “major” damage but I was still left wondering how long it would take to recover.  The crash rendered my left arm pretty much useless.  I couldn’t support any weight with it and a lot of motions were restricted.  I was immediately frustrated at the limitations that I now had to deal with.

The day after the crash I felt that if I had been able to ride home right after the crash had happened, then I could probably get back on the bike and ride the next day. Right? However as I thought about it more I realized there were some problems.  If I couldn’t get dressed on my own, how would I manage to change a tire if I got a flat?  What if something went wrong and I needed to get my arm(s) out to catch me?  I risked even further damage to my already vulnerable arm (or head!). In either case my left arm would be useless in trying to catch my fall and I may be stranded. With that in mind, I spent the next three days in the gym. 

My wife changed the bandages on the wounds several times a day; slathering it with Neosporin so the skin would never dry out and harden. She was concerned that it the skin scabbed and hardened that it would tear open again and slow the healing process and cause unnecessary scarring. Even with finding a great sale on bandages at Walgreens we spent over $120 in medical supplies (gauze pads, medical tape and Neosporin). By the time we were done with bandaging (which we stopped doing on about day ten) we had already gone through all of our tape and had to buy more. By the way, after a couple of days, you have to get creative in where you place the tape as the skin gets raw and sensitive. My wife would alternate the types of tape we used; tape at different angles and use different sizes and shapes of bandages to move around which areas of skin had to endure the sticky torture. It finally got to the point where the rawness of the skin from that tape hurt worse than the road rash itself.

Each morning I would wake up hoping that my arm would feel well enough to get out on the road and each morning was a disappointment.  However, during those three days at the gym I progressively got more and more movement out of my left arm.  Initially I only road the gym’s stationary bike but as the days went on I started to integrate the elliptical trainer as well to get my arms moving.  While the shoulder still wasn’t that strong, I woke up on the fourth day determined to give the bike a try.

As I got on the bike I realized that I was okay as long as I didn’t pull on the handle bars which would force me to leave out doing sprints and hard climbs, but I could still get some quality rides in the flats.  The first day I kept things at a recovery pace.  The next day I cranked it up to see what I could do and had impressive results:  I was able to get my heart rate up in the 95% (of max) range. For me it proved that I could still put out a strong effort without my shoulder complaining.  However, while I could still ride pretty strong, I knew that if I had to race I wouldn’t be able to do it because I just couldn’t get out of the saddle to sprint.



My shoulder at 6 days out.



On the sixth day I had another setback as I caught a cold that was going through the family which meant back to more frustrating recovery paced rides.  All the while my shoulder was only getting mildly better from day to day.  I remember thinking on Saturday morning that if I don’t turn a corner soon, I should probably go see a doctor to see if anything is wrong.  I was depressed that I wasn’t getting better as fast as I thought I should. I wasn’t able to lift or hold my son and cuddling with my wife took on an edge of danger.  At first we tried to sleep apart but neither of us could handle that so we had to be inventive in our positioning. I was more than ready for this ordeal to end.

By Saturday afternoon I went to the gym to do another easy-paced workout when my frustration reached a boiling point.  I was tired of being injured, I was done with it.  After I dropped the kids off in the kids club I decided to hit the weights.  (I wasn’t sure if I could handle free weights, so I stuck with the machines.)  On each exercise I would start with the lowest possible weight to test the motion and then I would move up to a higher (but still light for me) weight and do high rep sets.  As I worked my way through I was finding that I was able to do every exercise and by the end of the workout my arm felt GREAT! 

I was waiting for repercussions the next day from my frustrations, but it never came.  Yes, my arms were a little sore from the workout, however I had a decent range of motion and I found myself being able to start lifting things with my left arm again. My road rash wounds were looking a lot better as well and I spent some time without bandages to give my skin a break from the medical tape.

While I was happy I was making progress off the bike, I was still a little uncertain on the bike.  On Monday of this week I went out to do some time trial intervals.  I was nervous that I wouldn’t be able to stay in the drops for the entire interval and that I would be really slow because of the crash and cold I had caught.  To my surprise the shoulder didn’t give me any problems and I turned out a decent time!  The next thing to test would be sprinting, but I didn’t feel like pushing my luck that day, so I saved that for Wednesday (On Tuesday I watched the Tour of California and winter weather blow through Folsom).

As I headed out on Wednesday I was nervous again.  Initially I rode towards the flats so that I could focus solely on sprinting but as I thought about it I realized that I need to see if I can handle all aspects of the bike normally.  That meant not only testing sprinting but testing to see if I could climb up steep hills as well.  I pulled a U-turn and started heading towards the hills instead. Today I would try hill repeats and a sprint interval workout. 

The first several climbs went well but then, as I was following my workout plan, the climbs didn’t call for all-out efforts yet.  When I got to the interval that required me to be standing all the way up while staying in my drops I took off cautiously at first, gingerly testing to see if the shoulder would complain.  As I made my way up I started riding more and more aggressively but I held back and didn’t push myself to the limits.  The final interval required that I ride like I was trying to drop the (pretend) guy behind me.  While I did hit that interval hard, I did it all within the saddle, being cautious again.  As I got to the final part of the climb, I decided that it was now or never.   I stopped thinking and convinced myself to hop out of the saddle and take off as hard as I could towards the finish line.  I was thrilled that I made it to the top without a problem!  Even more exciting is that I was totally amped up for the sprint intervals on the way home.

The first two sprints I took off like a bat out of hell.  The shoulder was holding up great and I felt fast.  On the third interval I was getting a little tired from my first two efforts.  I still put up a good show and didn’t have any pain in the shoulder.  For the first time, I felt like I was ready to race again and felt good about my progress.

With some races coming up I am not sure if I have recovered enough to hang in all the way and compete.  My numbers are looking good but between the injury, getting sick, and scheduling issues, I haven’t been able to ride with anyone to gauge my progress since the day before the crash.  I don’t have a power meter so at times the numbers can be deceptive depending on wind conditions.  Still, I am looking forwards to getting back out to the races to compete and to try and start moving up from top 10 finishes to making it on the podium. 

My shoulder this morning.

I am almost all healed now and I have learned that I such at being injured. Luckily I had a wife that took good care of me and helped to temper my impatience with her caution. (I am not sure if it was because she loves me so much or she was just sick and tired of having to do all the heavy lifting, diaper changes, shoulder massages and bandage changing so she wanted me healed FAST. Maybe it was both.) I have also learned that you can be the most accomplished rider in the world -skilled, cautious and observant- and still get nailed and thrown to the ground by something you never saw coming. I may complain about what I had to deal with injury-wise but I also realize that the impact to my helmet could have been a life-altering injury if I had not had my melon protected. Buy a helmet, make sure it fits you and wear the darned thing. The world already has enough morons in it, we need to preserve every precious brain cell the human race has!

Day 1 of the injury.