Crash, bang, wallop! Written on April 12, 2010, by johnh.
A few weeks ago I was about to put up a post talking about my cross country season, but with some slight changes to the site my login wasn’t working. I sent an e-mail to get this sorted and then headed off to do a track session after a week of planned lesiure following the inter-counties cross country. I was cycling to the stadium and only about 300 metres from home a car who didn’t see me turned right across my path and wiped me out!
I was left at the side of the road, with my bike about five metres away. I was in unbelievable pain with my legs feeling like they were about to explode. A nurse happened to be passing and asked me if I had any tingling in my hands or feet, when I gave my answer of ‘loads’ she quickly made sure I didn’t move untill an ambulance came. I was completely immobilised and taken to hospital in the back of the ambulance. As a testament to the quality of my Salomon kit, my jacket and trousers were only scuffed and prevented much worse cuts, but the paramedics still cut my jacket, trousers, running tights and cycling shoes off me!
Thankfully it was all just cuts and bruises (although it was enough to make me nearly faint on standing up for the first time, and struggle with sleeping for about ten days) and the tingling was a result of hitting my nerves. When I look at the state of my bike I realise how lucky I was not to suffer worse injuries.
The accident was three weeks ago, and due to the swelling and bruising to my knees I’ve still not run and cycling is painful. Hopefully I’ll be jogging again in a week or two and I hope to be back to racing no later than June but I’ll have to wait and see.
