28th December: Crash

To blow away some of the Christmas lard in time for Sunday's Gut-Buster I went out with Moose on the Friday evening. We ambled along at a relatively sedate pace so as not to over-do things with my race and Moose had not been out cycling for a week or so as he is concentrating on his running for the Wokingham half marathon in a few weeks. It all went as per normal until we got to the furthest point from the village.

Just as we went along the road in to Long Sutton, in the darkness at the last moment I saw a massive gash in the road. In went my front wheel at an angle, moving me off balance to the side. In the fraction of a second before I could react to gain my balance my front wheel hit the end of the gash and pitched me forward.

Moose cycling behind saw it all quite clearly: One moment everything was normal, the next my wheels were in the air as I somersaulted before landing at speed, handlebars first. Because I cycle with SPD shoes clipped in to pedals it meant me and the bike are one fixed unit... Until impact when the twisting broke my feet free. Fortunately there had been plenty of rain so the road was greasy so I slid rather than stuck to the asphalt.

Moose's verdict: 8/10 for the acrobatics, 0/10 for the landing!

As I picked myself up I knew it was not good and my knee was throbbing already. I picked-up the bike and it seemed to be kind of ok - except for the bar-ends and the lights certainly weren't facing straight, so I just re-mounted and continued with the ride. My principal behind this was to stop would mean that swelling would commence and the knee would stiffen making it harder to re-commence.

When we returned, I told LSS about it and that I might need a bit of help cleaning it up - I go in to shock when I see large quantities of my own blood - So as I began to pass-out when I attempted to do it myself I had to call upon her to finish off what I had started. Soon enough all was dressed and I was a bit gutted about the thoughts of missing the Gut Buster a mere 36 hours away!

What it looked like when I walked through the door.

Turns out that I narrowly missed going down to the patella at 2 points, so there were holes where the flesh should be! I also had to pull some gravel out of my wrist as well!

Here's some shots of the bar-ends and the lights. It seems they took the full impact (thank god) and one of the bar-ends snapped clean-off. These things are solid metal cores with a rubber grip to them, so no mean feat as it is a good cubic centimetre of metal in cross-section. The other had snapped although the rubber had not split so it was held in place.

Right bar-end

Left bar-end

And the lights were scuffed on top to say the least, and these are solid aluminium casings:

Still, it certainly could have been a lot worse!