As you may have noticed from the title of this post, I was recently involved in a pretty terrifying bicycle accident.  I’ve been training pretty aggressively, and I’ve put about 250 miles on my new bike since I got it in April.  Four months of riding a bicycle at 25mph speeds after having not been on a bike in approximately 10 years has its problems.

A few weeks ago I was in a minor bike wreck while attempting to “Tour-de-France-pass” my water bottle to Nathan with my right hand.  My left hand hand developed its own agenda and steered my tire directly in to his rear tire at 15 mph (that sneaky spaz hand..).  Of course Nathan stayed upright, as he has not been off his bike in approximately 10 years, and ever-so-easily side slid the back tire to a more comfortable straightforward-moving position.  I can just remember myself thinking, “uh oh,” before my front tire went wonky and I crashed sideways in to the sidewalk and subsequent ditch.  My bike saddle was wrenched sideways, one of my brake hoods was turned the wrong way, and there were pieces of reflector scattered on the sidewalk.  Luckily my brand new Scattante clipless shoes did what they’re supposed to, and I learned very quickly about the design of the breakaway part of my trendy footwear.  My rear end was road-rashed for a couple days, but my awesome tri shorts didn’t tear, and besides the idea of never riding close to Nathan again I walked away fairly emotionally unscathed.

Last Wednesday, Nathan had Twilight Tattoo with the Old Guard and I decided it was a good day to get in some long hill work on the bike.  I grabbed my gear, saddled up and hit the road like I’ve done before.  I thought to myself how great I was doing- hitting all the lights to get to the Custis Trail entrance behind the Giant in Lyon Village (Arlington).  I got to the on-ramp to the trail, slowed a little, looked both ways and BAM! straight in to a cyclist coming in the other direction.  It’s up to interpretation about “who-hit-who” as I did stop and look before crossing the path – he was flying and said he was looking down at the time of impact.  I even had a moment when I first pulled out to say to myself, “Oh no, oh no, oh no,” before we were both a heaping crumpled mess on the sidewalk.  I rolled around and got up, asked if he was okay, and started the obligatory self-evaluation of what hurt and what didn’t.  Unfortunately it wasn’t very long before I realized where the pain was coming from, as I looked down at my hand leaking gruesome all over the bike path.  We exchanged short-talk to make sure we didn’t need to exchange information, and I slowly drug my broken self and scraped bike down the ramp back to the Giant.  A helpful random person went in the Giant and got me an ice pack for my finger, which was now the size of a giant carrot and blueish red, and I waited for Nathan to come take me to the emergency room at Arlington Hospital (which was actually quite wonderful, by the way).

Luckily it was not broken, only a possible fracture.  The problem now is the laceration on the fleshy part of my finger.  It has been causing my entire finger random bouts of tingling and numbness, and I can’t bend it down yet (feels terribly jammed).  I’m set to see a specialist next week to make sure there is no internal damage to the nerves/tendons.  What an event!

All that to say, I am now terrified of biking.  Nathan and I had a two hour bike on the schedule yesterday, and we only made it 20 miles in two hours.  Granted there was a lot of foot traffic, but it was unnaturally slow for the both of us.  I spent the evening reading blogs about other training accidents and felt like a wuss for my dinky crash, but I think it’ll take a while to be comfortable again.  I don’t trust my own body to make the right decisions – I practically shake myself right in to the ditches!  Yesterday a grouchy older cyclist yelled at me for being stopped at a stop sign on the path and “blocking the road.”  Of course I burst in to tears because I wanted to explain to him how traumatic merging is for me right now as he flew past me and cycled off.  I had to stop Nathan from going after him to let him know how rude he was.  Hopefully he got the message from someone else, though I doubt it.  Pay it forward old cycle man.

I’m also feeling frustrated with my training progress.  I feel like I’ve “hit a wall” (literally and figuratively..) with my mental training.  I literally can’t eat enough to provide fuel for myself to get stronger, and I’m just feeling tired all the time.  Today I bumped from the International distance at Luray to the Sprint to give myself more training time for an International.  I’m going to try to get one in September or October, but it’s looking like Miami Man might just be an International for me this year.  All is OK, just a little disheartening.  Looks like I’ll be training for the half iron, but competing at International.  Can’t hurt to be over-trained, right?