I was on a training ride with Kelly and our coach Pierre. We met up Appleby line in Burlington and the plan was to do a bunch of circuits of an upcoming race route (Kelly was thinking of doing the race the following Sunday). The course has a number of good hills and a couple of killer descents - without pedaling I would get up to 70km/h quite easily.
I must say, for heavier cyclists (like me!), it is quite the reward to zoom down hills after dragging your ass up a hill while watching little pixies virtually fly up the hill. We had done 5 or 6 loops of the circuit and I was getting pretty lulled into a false sense of no traffic (there was absolutely no traffic at all!).
I was descending 4th Sideroad (see map below) and into a left turn at 60km/h right in the center of the road. A car appeared coming up towards me. I think if I hadn't adjusted, I may have just missed him, but he spooked me. I adjusted my course, but I was going to fast and my trajectory had me headed straight for a three foot deep ditch....
I went down hard and it was very painful. I thought I'd broken my back. I couldn't move and I had a mouth full of gravel. My first thoughts were that I was going to miss something because of the crash but I couldn't remember what... that's it, I remembered, that Thursday was the midnight premiere for the Dark Knight! No, no, that wasn't it... then I rememembered... in 4 weeks I was going to the Tour for Kids. Shit!
I remember the driver of the pickup asking me a bunch of questions, and Kelly and Pierre as well. Luckily another cyclist named Andrew had a cell phone (mine was in the car for some stupid reason!), and he rode up the hill so he could get reception and called 911. Then Kelly used the phone to "calmly" call Beth.
I was barely able to get out of the ditch assisted by a couple of people, but it was agony. My back and chest felt awful. I climbed into the front seat of the pickup truck (I wish I had the guy's number, I would call and thank him and assure him that it wasn't his fault I'd ended up in a ditch...) and waited for the ambulance.
Everyone showed up in minutes - police, a fire truck and an ambulance. I was put on a back board and strapped down. These are the most painful things I have ever been on - it really seemed to amplify the pain. And because of the concern of a spinal injury, they would not give me pain medication. The trip to the hospital in Milton and the 30-45 minutes waiting for an X-ray in a hallway by myself attached to that fucking board seemed like it took forever.
Finally, I was wheeled back into the triage room and allowed to be slid off the back board - there was no sign of a fracture to my spine, but they wanted me to get an MRI the next day just to be sure. Finally, I was given Tylenol 3s and an injection of an anti-inflammatory. Ross, Dad and Beth showed up with varying degrees of worry on their faces - I guess I looked even worse than I felt. Ross drove us home and I got to look at my bike for the first time - the front wheel was completely totaled, but remarkably, the rest of the bike was relatively unharmed. I couldn't say the same for my helmet, or my body...
This picture does not do my helmet justice... it was completely fucked:
Road rash!
