Wednesday, February 3, 2010

How I Got Hurt, and two Ironies


Some may have seen my facebook status yesterday and now you see a picture. The story is this:
I was biking to the Dining Commons yesterday morning before work. I was rode there because I was trying to save time. It had snowed. There was ice on the sidewalk. I almost made it though. I got to the stop sign which is next to the Dining Commons. In order to cross, you need to make two small turns. On the second turn, I leaned in and suddenly I found myself on the ground.
Because of years of experience on the bike, and crashing on bikes, I was able to crash without the bike landing on me, it flew in front of me. Because my left hand was otherwise occupied, my right knee, right hand and chin took most of the blow. I'm glad I didn't have my whole weight on one spot. (Like my wrist, knee or chin.) So the impact dissipated throughout my body. I had a small gash on my hand. My knee was cut, and I had a scrape on my chin, which isn't noticeable because of facial hair.

I laid there for a bit, wondering if anyone saw me. No one was around.
I thought I heard voices, maybe the angels were arguing over who failed to protect me, or arguing who succeeding protecting me. I sat up, made sure nothing was broken and walked my bike to the Dining Commons. I got a first aid kit, fixed my hand and went to work, I didn't get breakfast because of the accident. My boss suggested that I should go to the Health Center when they opened (She threatened to call my hall director... though it wasn't a threat, I think it was more of a motherly warning.) So after work I went to the Health Center. They checked me out and cleaned out my cuts, which was really painful because the nurse had to dig into my skin to get sand and rocks out. I would have just left them, in my experience that stuff tend to come out eventually. (I am no medical expert and they said it could lead to an infection. If it was me, in the least they could have used a knife instead a cue tip to get it out though!) I didn't feel very good for a while, after I got some food, and took a nap, I felt much better. I'm still not back to 100% though. It probably will take about a week to fully recover.

The Two Ironies, including my Triathlon Goals for the Year
First, you may be wondering why my left hand was otherwise occupied when I fell. I was holding my coffee. Yes, I was riding my bike while drinking coffee. I won't do it again, at least I will try not to. The irony is that though I did not save my head, knee and hand, I did save the coffee. It was set nicely on the pavement, the top popped off but the majority of the drink was saved. I drank the rest at work.

Second, one of my goals for this year is to avoid being injured. I have struggled with with overuse injuries and avoidable accidents. Hopefully this is the only injury of the year, after my back and knees get better of course.
My other goal for the year is to get my sprint triathlon time below 1 hr. My best time is 1:06.29, and I believe I can get my speed up so that I can drop the necessary six minutes. This will also drop the quantity of hours and miles I will be doing. I think many of my injuries have been related to overuse and trying to do too much too early. So I do not plan on doing any longer triathlons this year, which is a bit frustrating, but I rather shoot lower this year and not get hurt then risk getting hurt and getting far ahead.

1 comment:

  1. Well written, sir. Where do you work?

    Perhaps I've been watching Cirque du Soleil far too much, but sounds like quite an act!

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for your comment, I'll review it as soon as I can!