Originally posted by deliriou5
man... 'twas an awesome ride today up till halfway, when i was riding over a sandy breach and the bike ran off the shoulder. bike went crazy and my body went flyin into the ground. got some superficial scrapes... but i landed on the ground with my left hand to break the fall. i had some major pain in my wrist, but i was able to position my hand in such a way that it didn't hurt so i could limp home. i was ridin strong up till that point, and afterwards though it didnt hurt THAT bad, it was as if all the strength and will to ride had been drained from my body. what is totally scary is that i wear my helmet EVERY time I ride... well every day except today, and today was the first time i've fallen since i bought the helmet. i realize how stupid and lucky i am that i didn't land on my head. the admitting nurse at the ER was telling me how there were some pretty bad biking injuries today.. and none of them were wearing their helmets. maybe it's some weird kinda retribution from the bike gods LOL. anyways now i am totally depressed, cuz i won't be able to run bike or go to work for a whole week. a whole week of sitting in front of the boob tube, wishing i were outside. the doc told me that i'll have to have a splint or maybe even a cast on my left arm. man i might not even be able to drive!! 
. what sux most is that i was plannin on doing a half marathon next week, and then a ms150 after that. now i highly doubt that i'll be able to .
I did you one better, I was in a short paceline and the leader did rode really close to a pothole and I ended up doing a header at 25 mph. I later found out that the leader crashes about 4X per year
. I shattered my helmet, put a gouge in my shoulder, broke my collar bone (clavicle), broke my shoulder blade (scapula), and broke the ulna in 2 places in the elbow joint. Three days later they screwed the thing together with a 4.5" wood screw (a metal screw with large threads) and about 12" of bailing wire to hold it all together. It looks like they filleted my elbow.
Now I was up and out walking in 2 days after the operation. I could not drive for 5 weeks. I was able to windtrain in 5 weeks and ride in 8 weeks. I managed to get pretty decent exercise in the meantime by just going on fast walks
. I lost relatively little in the way of conditioning. Right now, I can do about 65 miles before my elbow starts hurting fairly seriously.
Do not sit on your keester. Get out there and do something, anything.