grolby

In case it's not obvious, thinking/learning how one could have avoided injuries is a different flipping subject from dealing with injury, recovering and so on. We aren't always perfect and sooner or later we hurt ourselves in one way or another. It's not surprising that there were immediately people coming in to inform everyone that they should be engaging in more self-flagellation instead of talking about the process and experience of getting over an injury, but it's still disappointing.

spectastic

why don't you start a thread about telling people to start the kind of threads about what threads people should and shouldn't start?

spectastic

I'm not against a thread like this. I just want to know, after hearing about broken collar bones, hips, etc, how they happened.

when you have a thread where people say "well my clavicle plate...." it almost conveys the idea that if you race bikes, this will happen to you eventually. I don't like to think like that.

shovelhd

OK, I'll play. Most of things I mentioned were non-cycling related.

Separated shoulder. Lap 3 of an M40+ criterium in NYC. Open course, full view all the way around. The fastest line through turn two is a squeeze point onto the grass. Trees are ~3 feet from the edge. I'm sitting 5th wheel with my teammate 3rd. Two strong guys who could stay away hit the gas, and teammate follows. In front of me is a guy who is clearly struggling to stay up front so I get through turn two and jump on the right as the pack starts to react to the attack on the left. He decides to squeeze me onto the grass, so I lean on him as I pass. He freaks out and starts leaning all over me, and he has 30 pounds on me easy. We drift onto the grass and I slow a bit but he continues to freak out and hits the brakes. We hook bars. I try and detach but with a tree looming the control just wasn't there and I fall on my shoulder. The speed wasn't that high but I landed square on it. In hindsight, I should have let the field sort out another 5 seconds and attacked him then. I attacked at what was the end of the squeeze point and this guy just was out of his league.

Broken finger. 4 to go at an M40+ twilight criterium with my teammate on my wheel. Technical course in horrendous condition. The crosswalks were freshly painted and would turn out to be slippery even though the course was dry. I'm coming through turn 4, the most technical turn on the course. New crosswalk, uphill right before the downhill sprint, off camber left, high granite curbing on both sides. I am around 8th wheel. I get about halfway through the corner and the rider in front of me chops my wheel out as he goes around the corner. I battle to stay up but my line into the curb and the remaining road just don't add up and I go down. I immediately turtle as who knows how many riders stack up on top of me. I think my finger was broken by a wheel spoke or other bike part as it passed over me. I also pulled my groin, which I believe was from trying to save the bike from going down. I managed to find a few press pictures which told me a bit of a different story than what I remembered. It looks like when my front wheel hit the crosswalk it slid ahead and out. That slight loss of control coupled with the start of the acceleration out of the corner caused my front wheel to hit the rider's rear wheel in front of me. The photographer had a bunch of other shots of riders sliding out in the same place that I did. It's just too much of a coincidence. I never felt anything slip out all night long, but this kind of stuff can be subtle. There's not much you can do about situations like this, but my takeaway is that I'm not racing this course again, or any more M40+ races unless it's a team event.

shermo

Broken clavicle. Tight bunch, person in front hit a cone and knocked it into my path. I could have bunny hopped it, perhaps, but I couldn't have avoided it otherwise. I suppose you could always say that I should have been further up.

Cone shouldn't have been there in the first place, but that's another discussion.

LAJ

@tetonrider, you were fighting range of motion issues on your TT bike. I am wondering if it was adductor type stuff? I seem to be at 98% good rom, but that last little 2% is kicking my butt. My knee is kicking out when on the TT rig, and the pain seems to be right at the adductor. I also feel it when leaning over to tie my shoe. Any advice? I had the femoral neck fracture, btw.

Ygduf

stay at home

Ygduf

Enthalpic

Shovel how did you lose fingers? I have a little hardware (goretex mesh and staples) from a hernia repair but not related to cycling.

I've had three bad crashes, two from group rides one from a race.

1st - unavoidable pile up on a straightaway due to a crappy team who thought they could team time trail to win a road race then crashed out the whole front of the field because one of their gassed riders couldn't rotate properly. Result: broken back; months off the bike with physio and lingering issues.

2nd - Group ride where one other rider an I were sprinting up a power climb. The guy decided to be sneaky and pass on the right in the f'ing gutter instead of on the left where he had the full road. I knew he was about to attack, but since I was far right I looked to the left at which time he attacked using the gutter on the right but the gap was too small. Afterwards me and the other rider agreed that we both we were both partially at fault but according to the rest of the group behind it was his fault. Result: Morel lavallee lesion, lingering numbness and scarring.

3rd- Late fall group ride where I was underdressed and it started raining. The group was strung out to get home fast and out of the cold rain when we approached a construction zone where there were warning signs on the road. The rider in front of me was large and I could not see around him and he swerved around the sign at the last moment and did not point out the hazard. I was so cold and stiff I could not react in time and hit one of the legs of the sign and crashed. I take the blame for this one as I was pretty much hypothermic and unable to properly respond, but the other riders apologized for not riding safely. Result broken hand that healed nicely.

LAJ

I'll also play. I thought I had the wreck missed, but I got hit from behind. In hindsight, I don't think I needed to slow down as much as I did. Bell was rung pretty good, though I didn't realize it at the time, and some screws in my femoral neck.

grolby

I don't agree. Of course it isn't inevitable that you will be injured if you race bikes, especially in the case of traumatic injury. However, it is inevitable that some number of racers will be injured. In the same way that it is extremely unlikely that you, personally, will be struck by lightning this year, but inevitable that someone will be struck by lightning this year. Except you're more likely to get injured in a bike race, probably. For what it's worth, I broke my collarbone twice in a year, yet neither of those times were in a road race (the first time was during a cyclocross race).

Anyway, sure, I'll say what happened. Both times I broke my clavicle it happened in the same sort of situation. I was on my cyclocross bike, going down a steep descent and I got my weight distribution wrong. I let myself get bounced forward, overbalanced and went down. The first time, totally head-over-heels, the second time it was less dramatic and I fell forward and sideways but didn't really end up separated from my bike. The severity of the breaks more-or-less match up to the violence with which I came off the bike - really bad the first time, much less bad the second time. You can bet that I chalk these injuries up to a weakness in skill and that steep descents are a major target for me for cyclocross improvements.

My gastroc problems are about overuse, fit, and the particulars of my anatomy, so they aren't that interesting. I've never had a serious injury due to a road race crash.

spectastic

All I'm gonna say is I hope to never break my collarbone, hip or femur , and if there are precautions that I can take to minimize those chances, I'm all ears. Granted, some of them are unavoidable, but it doesn't hurt to hear the stories and how they happen to at least understand the scenario, even if they're self explanatory, or if someone else was just curious.

spectastic

I'm unable to process this. can you translate this expression in the form of a sentence?

Ygduf

My collarbones: 1st - overcooked a corner on a narrow back road that I was unfamiliar with. My fault. Clavicle #2 - riding in a 4 man break, rotating clockwise. Guy on front gets impatient and looks left, swerving left and cutting the wheel of the guy moving up. He falls off his bike onto my front wheel, catapult-y.

Ribs - head down, making a bridge attempt on a group ride. Head down, I rode off the lip of the road. Thought I was saving it until I hit the drainage pipe jutting out into the ditch. Whoops.

revchuck 

Broken collarbone, v1.0: As the field compressed after a surge during a road race, for some reason I just didn't slow down enough and hit another racer's rear tire with my front. Chuckie fall down, go boom. 100% my fault.

Broken collarbone, v2.0: Five minutes into a training ride, a car on a cross street comes up to a stop sign, comes to a dead stop, looks both ways for cars, and pulls out 20 feet in front of me. The last reading on the Garmin was 18.2 mph. I had time to grab my brakes but not slow down. He was moving from my right to left; I hit right behind his front wheel well and pivoted to my right, with my right shoulder (same one I hit in the race) taking almost all the impact. The plate that was inserted after the first break was bent at about a 20 degree angle. The bone doc decided the best course of action is to leave it as is and let it heal.

I had range of motion issues from the first break that hadn't been resolved when the second break occurred, so they're worse now. OTOH, I'm still on this side of the grass and still loving the bike. Smug though it sounds, I'd rather be in my situation than that of many of my age peers - fat, short of breath, and wondering when they'll have their next heart attack.

gsteinb

my list would look like a CDR post

mattm

this.

hind-sight is 20/20, and from an armchair accidents seem avoidable..

i dont think you can learn **** from someone else's accident, no more than you can learn something by rubbernecking at a car crash..

shovelhd

I slipped and fell into a running lawn mower when I was 14. They were pinned but gangrene took them for good. That's the short version. They are the index and middle fingers of my left hand. So when I broke my left ring finger in the accident described above, that shut my racing season down, as I only had one good finger left. All healed now. I still have a little pain at the joint but I expect that to be gone by the spring.

shovelhd

I broke my left collarbone on my tarck bike doing sprint intervals between traffic lights. I misjudged one and had to back off too fast, went head over heels and tumbled into the intersection. Back then they didn't do surgery so they put me in one of those harnesses that pulled your shoulder back. Man that sucked.

cderalow

Left clavicle plate with 10 screws - since 2008

Right femur pin, plate(s) and 23 screws - since 2001

all in place still. I debate getting the clavicle plate removed because like the OP, it's right at the surface and when struck right, can put me into tears.

Right femur hardware is why I'm 1/2" shorter on that side.

topflightpro

Well, I can finally say my knee feels better. And it's been more than two years since I could say that. Of course, it took three rounds of physical therapy and more than a year of no racing nor hard riding to get to this point.

However, my right hip/hip flexor has been killing me lately. I'm not sure what the issue is, but it has been keeping me awake at night. I've had discomfort there for years, but it's never been this bad. Doesn't really bother me on the bike though.

spectastic

you don't learn anything at a crash scene because you mostly like don't know the cause.

just like you don't learning anything from people putting out a laundry list of injuries.

there's a reason why they have safety videos out there about why you shouldn't drink/drive, text/drive, corner too fast on a motorcycle (as well as other common mistakes). there are lessons to be learned from other people's mistakes. yeah, having the crash actually happen will make for a better lesson, but that doesn't mean preventative measures can't be taken

mattm

ok, so from this thread you've learned what?

not to race in packs and avoid mowing lawns?

YMCA

I won't, if you won't

spectastic

that a rhetorical question? why are you so worked up about what I have to say about all of this? if you don't agree, just say that, and mind your own business.