according to x-rays, it's not broken, but that's all i know about it. anyone ever done this? is there any way to take 10-14 days off the bike right now (doctor's recommendation) in the middle of racing season without ruining my fitness? big races are 4/27-28, possibly 5/4-5, and 5/25-6.

pretty bummed though...have to skip this weekend and possibly next at the minimum.

Bruised mine trying to show some Germans how to break dance properly while drunk at a wedding in the Black Forest.

Not the smartest thing I've ever done.

It definitely took a bite out of my fitness. Anyway, the season has just started so listen to your doctor. You still have 6 months of racing ahead of you.

You'll probably be fine. Obviously won't be in the best possible fitness for those races, but you won't lose too much assuming you can get back on the bike and start working hard as soon as possible. Just make sure you let that thing heal all the way or you'll be dealing with this all season (much worse than a few days off).

Is problem that you should not put weight on it, such as sitting in the saddle ? Join a gym and use the stair-stepper machine for an hour .... basically the same muscles .... mix with the treadmill ??

I am no Dr. (but I do work in a clinical setting and have for 20 years), and my take on this is usually this:

You are no Dr. and your Dr. is probably not an athlete/cyclist. Your Dr. does not know how much pain you are feeling or not feeling.
Sure, take a few days off to allow the trauma and swelling to go down. Then walk or swim after that. Anything you can do without aggravating your injury but that gets you moving. Then try to the bike and listen carefully to your body. Don't go too hard too fast and feel it out and go from there adding time and workload until you are back to feeling like yourself.

Don't be afraid to have a frank conversation with your Dr. about your goals and see if you can get past his/her initial and standard blah blah speech that they give to everyone and get their real assessment and opinion on recovery.

Uh oh, I am fired up now...
Had a surgeon amputate my best friends leg due to a motorcycle racing injury. he was 21 and an athlete. Turns out that the surgeon did the same amputation that is done on 90+ year and sedentary folks. So when he got his prosthesis and started doing normal stuff athletes do he had issues with his stump. After going to a sports surgeon, he had a second (just as painful again), amputation further up but done in a manner so that he could run and bike on it, etc...

Many people here in our ED come in and are happy to be told to do nothing (sit on their asses, pop pain pills and get a work note so they can stay home), because they bumped their elbow and the physicians keep cranking out the pain med scripts.

Sorry, maybe I am jaded :-)

My point is that you have a minor but probably painful injury but that does not mean that you need to stop everything and lose your mind and some fitness (which you won't really), just taking 10-14 days off. I know how you feel though.

In before rkwaki makes a bust your ass joke

In general, I don't do anything that aggravates connective tissue or bone pain. Take it slow.

Halt, Hammerzeit!

I bruised mine here, a couple of weeks before the season, a few years back


I can't answer the time off question... that's between your coach and god, I guess.

I, of course, trained through it.

thanks for the advice, everyone.

well, that at least sounds like a good story. and as for the season...maybe, but i don't know where i'll be over the summer. and since this spring is my last season racing collegiate, it was kind of important to me.

sitting in the saddle actually doesn't really hurt. it's only when i stand and sprint or do anything else that tweaks the muscles connected to it.

yeah...that's why i figured i'd get some input from you guys.

that was my plan for the first week, until i went for a ride on wednesday and tried to do 1-minute intervals. on the fourth one, i must have tweaked it or something...after that i couldn't even get out of the saddle. i can't really race like that. i probably could train right now, but i want to be able to race later in the season...trying to find the right balance between letting it heal some and not losing all my fitness.

i dont know what exactly your injury is or how you got it. last year I crashed in a race that was a flip and an ass first (actually tailbone area) landing on the road while going somewhere around 30 mph. at first i thought i broke my back, then i thought i broke my tailbone, then i realized i could move, etc., etc.

anyway, i had pain radiating from the tailbone in the direction of my hips on both sides. the PT I go to explained that when there is an impact, as there was in my case, surrounding muscle tissue responds immediately by tensing up in an effort to protect itself, which combined with the bruising from impact was the cause of the pain i was encountering. treatment was initially ice, some massage, and stretching, then when bruising was diminished (like a week) we treated with dry needling (https://www.schrierpt.com/dryneedling/). i was off the bike for a couple of weeks, but that was due to a concussion from the same crash and requisite recovery time.

Come to think of it this happened twice. Once in the way I described, and once in a track crash. I couldn't make power coming out of turns. So I was fine steady state, but accelerations killed me. It was late in the year, August, but it pretty much killed my season. No that alone, but on the heels of it I went on vacation and I really lost my upper end.

I'd recommend doing whatever you can that doesn't hurt. It's a self limiting injury, meaning you're not going to make it worse, but it hurts like hell.

my experience also

same.

That's what she said...

slipped while trying to get started on an uphill and landed really hard on the saddle. it was stupid. you can laugh.

sort of feels like this is what's happening. it kind of spasms whenever i move the wrong way.

sort of. most of the time it doesn't really hurt, but when i move the wrong way (e.g. try to sprint), it spasms really suddenly and sharply. it's all but impossible to ride through it. but yeah, i know what you mean.

i'll rest for a few days and see how it goes.