Crashed! What to do now?
 

Was about a 2 miles from finishing up a 60 mile ride and crashed going about 25-30mph on a downhill (2 lane road with medium size shoulders) I ended up hitting a rut between the shoulder and road and went down hard.

A couple of thing:
1. The human spirit is alive and well in the Seattle area - a bunch of motorists stopped to offer assistance. One guy even pulled out his 1st aid it and started cleaning my wounds.
2. Looks like the I took the brunt of the crash - the bike, save for some scratches on the RD and damage to the nameplates on the DA7900 shifters, looks good. I dropped off the bike to my LBS to have them go through it.
3. My Giro Atmos helmet sustained a couple of big cracks - I'm sure it saved me from any severe head injuries.

Bottom line - besides road rash all over my shoulder, arms, leg, and face (all on the right siide - my wife calls me 2 Face from Batman) I have a broken collarbone.

My doctor said he thinks 6-8 weeks for recovery. I'm seeing a specialist on Wed.

For those who have sustained injuries or for whatever reason could not ride outside (maybe due to snow) for extended periods. how do you maintain your bike fitness level??

i was thinking of just hooking up my bike to me fluid trainer and riding but that can get boring for 8 weeks. Amy other ideas?

Augh! Heal quickly. Awesome that your helmet did its job. Boring or not, ride the trainer. Eight weeks sounds like a long time, but you'll still have much of the season left. Think of it in smaller numbers, like two months, or 1/6 of a year.

Ouch! I am sorry to hear you got hurt man.

You should really take it easy during your recovery. Luckily you didn't break/fracture your hip, ankle, or knee. You will probably be able to hop on a trainer pretty soon, but for now, if you live near a pool, you can do some swimming to ease your recovery (however due to your broken collarbone that probably wont happen either)

Good idea taking your bike to the shop, you never know if there is damage that you couldn't see (in the carbon fiber) or a bent derailleur.

I wish you luck in your recovery.

Ouch... heal up soon.

i broke my jaw during december and the best thing i could really do was take jogs around the area. no serious running or biking. i just painfully watched as i drank through a straw. running is pretty good though if you wanna give it a shot

Hope you recover quickly . We had a crash on our tandem a few years ago and my stoker wife broke her clavicle and scapula while I only had road rash.
We live next to a rail to trail path(30 miles in lenght) so we picked up a bike E for her to ride on the trail . It worked well and I rode it on the roads. With clipless pedals it
worked well. Ten weeks later she tripped and in a effort to protect her broken side she broke the other collarbone. Be careful .

Good thought - I hate running but probably think that won't fly as it would involve arm pumping which probably is not good for the collarbone.

The ironic thing is I was riding with by brother in law at the time and we were actually talking about how to go faster downhill. I am a much stronger climber than descender. I am a bit of a wuss when it comes to taking chances downhill. Now I'll be even more of a wuss going downhill when I get back to riding.

do the trainer....board member in my club broke his collar bone in a ride and was back in 1 month! he is at least 56 btw

How did you fall? What caused it?

Between the road and the shoulder was a rut that I hit. Bike then went out of control and I landed on my right side on the road. Thankfully there wasn't a car close behind me on the road.

thank god you were rocking a helmet... that would've been a mess...


harvey dent doesn't sound as bad as two face... let her know i said that...

Take walks with your wife.....at night so as to not frighten the neighbors until your face heals.:lol:
Seriously, heal your body, take it easy the bike isn't going anywhere.
Thank God you made it out alive, at those speeds, many don't.
Heal soon!

Glad you're relatively ok.

Not to be critical, and speaking with the benefit of hindsight and time to reflect, there are a couple of lessons learned here.

1) When you're going downhill it's ok to move further into the lane of traffic. This gives you more of a margin for error, and because you're often going close to the speed of traffic, you're less of an impediment to trafiic. Your legal obligation is only to ride as far right as practicable.


2) Watch for ruts parrallel to your line of travel and do not cross them at shallow angles. If you need to cross a rut, do so at an acute angle. If that's not possible, then either slow down, or bunny hop it.

I'm sorry to hear about your accident.

for training - let your body recover first.
after that, trainers are the most cycle-specific method of training you can get
but water-walking/running (immobilize your arm/shoulder first) works well
or.... just take long walks... don't sweat it, you'll be back soon.

I hope you have a speedy recovery! Take it easy while the bone heals, you will know when your body's ready.
Point #2 bears repeating. That was how I crashed the first time when I tried to cross an old defunct trolley rail in the city. Entering at a shallow angle and at a slow speed was why I went down. Even though I was riding at probably 5-10 mph, the road rash put me out of commission for a week even though nothing was broken.