Not Too Tough!

I suppose I have always prided myself on being tough enough. I bike more than four thousand miles a year and have earned a local reputation for crushing other cyclists on the big climbs. And I'm trying not to be just a skinny cyclist. A couple of years ago I worked up to doing 98 consecutive push-ups without pausing; more recently I have been in the habit of doing nine repetitions of thirty high-quality push-ups. So I should be tough enough. . . .

But I'm not. I got my first glimpse of an inner wimp when I went in for my annual physical in October. The doctor ordered up an array of routine blood tests, and the med tech and I chatted amiably while watching a half-dozen little vials fill with the precious red stuff. The last test tube seemed to fill slowly, but it filled; and as the needle was finally extracted, my vision went from gray to black. The next thing I knew I was surrounded by a half-dozen frantic people propping me in my chair and trying to get my attention. I didn't know who these people were. I couldn't even remember where I was. I felt rather like a political prisoner undergoing a harsh interrogation, but I gradually came to my senses, was transferred onto a gurney, was given IV fluids, and was eventually send home with the genial exhortation (suitable for an elderly 62-year-old) to take it easy for the rest of the day.

OK, so needles can make me faint. That's my body betraying me, but the conscious mind is where toughness resides. The grit to storm up Matney Mountain, standing on the pedals all the way. The ability to push a two-hour time trial at record pace, culminating with that brutal little climb up Cemetery Hill. Those are my marks of toughness. I like to think that steady training over a period of at least two decades has made me a solid cyclist.

Not so fast! Far from being a competent cyclist, I may not even be an adequate one. On the day before Thanksgiving Sue and I went for a little bike ride along the beach in Destin, Florida. We were noodling along -- looking at the water, the beach bungalows, and the

I crashed at the "point" near the end of the parking lot.

GPS Map and Graphs

tourists. The bike path took us across a parking lot and then up onto a multi-use sidewalk. A tiny little lip at the transition between concrete and asphalt--something a six-year-old on pink coaster bike had just handled with ease--flipped me over my handlebars and onto the concrete, where I landed hard on my right shoulder and smacked my head to the ground hard enough to dent the plastic and leave me completed dazed. I rather quickly suspected that I had broken my clavicle, but I couldn't remember (and still can't remember) exactly what caused me to lose control.

The graphs from my Garmin GPS show the exact location and speed (9 mph) at which I hit the deck, but not the cause. My guess is that I hit the lip at an angle where the two sections of pavement joined. My front wheel probably twisted enough either to make me grab the brakes too hard or to lose my grip altogether. Unfortunately, I can't be sure of this hypothesis so there is no way to learn from my mistake. I fell. That's all there is to say.

The bones I seem to break (clavicle this year; ribs in 1998) are the ones where the doc just writes a script for pain pills, pats you on the head, and tells you to come back in six weeks. The broken collarbone has been a bit uncomfortable and limiting, but yesterday (a full week after the injury) I was able to get back on my road bike for the first time (on the indoor trainer). As I was changing clothes after my workout, I took this snapshot of the current state of gruesome bruising.

Not too shabby! I may not be brave enough to face a hypodermic needle or coordinated enough to handle an urban bike path, but I do bruise up nicely!