So my partner and I are in the shop taking a break and jawing about injuries... he's 76 and used to race professionally and has logged half a million miles... he has crashed a few times.

Says that he has never broken a bone in his life but has required a few stitches.

So he says... I crashed during a time trial when another rider went down in front of me, after he tried a stupid manouver, and ended up hitting the pavement pretty hard but picked myself up, saw my bike was okay. So I got back on the road and was feeling fine... and I was in the lead.

A few miles or so down the road I look down and see blood all over my leg so pull off and check to see what happened as I can't feel anything wrong and there is nothing to see and then I look at my hand.

Squeamish people should skip the next part...

When I looked at my hand I saw that when I hit the ground during the crash that I had torn the skin and flesh off my fingertips and could see the bone tips on a few of them.

So I asked him what he did...

"I wrapped up my hand with my shirt and kept riding as I was still 20 miles from a hospital".

This happened in the late 50's so there were no cel phones... if something went sideways you would hope that you were close to a farm or could wave someone down.