Going Down – Falling off the Bike

Saturday was supposed to be a nice day and I was excited to get a ride in. The temperatures have been dropping and daylight has been decreasing. It was a chilly morning, and there was a fair amount of cloud cover. We didn’t start the ride until about noon, but I dressed warm just in case. I put on knee warmers, arm warmers and a vest. I was actually quite comfortable as we started to ride.

Jessica and I planed on a 5o mile ride, which seems appropriate for the start of November. The first 25 miles went great and as we hit the halfway point and started heading back the sun started coming out. I started to heat up and rolled down my arm warmers and unzipped my vest. I wish I would have left those arm warmers on.

On the way back, we had to ride through Chatfield State Park. I’ve ridden that direction countless times, but somehow I missed the correct turn. Jessica, gave me some grief and she took the lead. We were able to go up the dam on the road and meet back to the bike path. I had rode that direction the week before so I took the lead again since I knew right were the trail was.

As I got onto the trail I reached down for my water bottle. I noticed there wasn’t much left. We were were only about 7 miles out so it wan’t a big deal. While I was drinking I started looking at my bottle, my front tire went off the trail. In a freak effort to correct back onto the trail, I pulled to the left and over corrected.

I remember thinking, “I’m going down!” And I did. I went down hard.

My water bottle flew out in front of me and my right side hit the ground. It was a bit of a shock to the system.  Jessica came over and picked up my bike. The drop bar was stuck under the top tube and it took some prying to get it free. The left hood had gotten pushed to the right and at first I thought my handle bars were bent. Lucky they weren’t.

My body wasn’t in great shape, but considering, I made it out okay. My left shoulder was sore and my left index finger was jammed, swollen, black and blue. My right forearm was skinned and my right hip was really sore. I was left with a nasty scrape, but it didn’t break the skin because of my chamois. I was in pain, but nothing intolerable.

I gave my bike a quick once over and was happy to see there was nothing major wrong. Other than the hood that moved, the only other casualty was a scratch on my right break lever. Just a cosmetic thing, so no big deal.

We rode back, and while I wasn’t feeling 100% it wasn’t so bad. I was excited to shower so I could clean off all of my scrapes. The next morning I was sore and could definitely feel the fall. I went for a swim and it actually made things feel better. I know now I need to always keep my eyes on the road, it only takes a moment to get off track.