This week can be defined not so much in a summary of my training, but in a singular tale of desperation and woe, and how it played out over Instagram. Okay, that's waaaay too dramatic, but let's just say that this week I have more to show than I do to tell.
Our story begins with my decision that sleeping in, going to the farmer's market, and getting one more long ride in before the first Tri-State 6 Hour Series race were all more important to me than doing the DINO race at French Lick on Saturday. I got my sleep, got my incredible local cherries that I look forward to all year long, and got to BCSP around noon feeling really good about my decision. I was chugging around thinking three laps would be the perfect length ride to stretch my endurance limits just a bit and still get me home in time to do something fun in the evening. Everything was going swimmingly as I ripped the descent going into Green Valley on the first lap, and I started getting all fancy catching air on all the little whoops before you reach the creek.
I've learned the problem with a fully rigid bike is that it goes up really easily and goes down really hard. I'm still learning to control this, and on that particular day, it got out of hand. I came down hard on the front end, panicked and grabbed the brakes, started to endo, was launched down the trail, felt my helmet skid and bounce like a skipping stone, and then my bike finally landed on top of me. Awesome. It initially felt like no real damage had been done to my bike or person, although I was definitely going to be pulled/sprained/bruised in the morning. The whole general area of my left hand hurt, but by all "can you move it" tests, it appeared fine.
That kind of killed my mojo and any three-lap plans I'd been haboring. I just finished the lap and headed home. I adopted the alternative plan of spending the rest of the afternoon on the couch while I enjoyed the deformed can of Coors Light that someone had left in my freezer at a dinner party the week before. Bent out of shape can and bent out of shape body seemed to be the perfect combo.
Unfortunately, I took a nap after this and woke up with my hand in sudden, incredible pain. I still had to unload my bike from the car, which was excruciating. At that point, I decided to get in the car and go get some ice, but at the first stoplight I turned towards the emergency room instead of the convenience store. It hurt that bad, and I was paranoid after recently hearing about friend walking around for four weeks with broken shoulder last summer. I figured better safe than sorry.
X-rays proved nothing was broken, and two hours later I went home with a splint, some pain meds, and some piece of mind. I'm not sure why, but putting on the splint made it feel tons better. I think it was probably just that whole nerve interruption thing.
After that ordeal, I expected to stay home and be lazy all Sunday, but I was feeling well enough to do the pictorial tour of the B-line Trail that I've been wanting to do for a while. My Via doesn't exactly require a lot of heavy usage of my left hand, so I was able to spin around with it hanging loose most of the time. It was pretty fun.
So the weekend was a bit of a waste training-wise, but it was probably okay, since I've been needing to stay home and chill out for a while now. Forced rest can be good. The situation is improving rapidly, so I'm still hoping that my hand will be stable enough for the 6 hour race at Versailles this weekend, but we'll see.
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| I had some metallic sharpies left from a previous craft project, and I was trying to be meta. Didn't come out shiny enough. |
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