I'll just preface this by saying that I'm going to be absolutely fine; no permanent damage done to my brain, just a whole pile of unnecessary headaches and more time off from having fun than I should have had. I'm just so thankful that I didn't permanently mess myself up or need any trips to the hospital resulting in giant piles of medical bills. However, I did learn the hard way (yet again) that rest means REST, not just going about my normal routine at a slower pace. It's a difficult thing when there's no visible damage, like a broken bone, or a limb that won't work properly. But come on, think about it, you only get one brain!
No, I didn't crash on a super gnarly rock section or a giant gap jump... It was a trail I've ridden hundreds of times and a jump I've hit a majority of those times. Here is a video of myself sailing over the offending jump about 3 years ago:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=504142304377&l=5322191277022301628
It's not very big, there is no death gap, but it's a little scary because the landing is so steep and in between two trees. I also haven't hit it very often in the past couple of years because it's really not all that fun and hard to get the right angle. Whatever made me decide to try it that day I have no idea, and how I thought it was a good idea to not land back wheel first is another question. Somehow I managed to hit the knuckle with my front wheel and go tumbling headfirst onto the pavement-hard landing at a fairly high speed. I was a bit dazed but got right up and finished the trail, and actually made the good decision to quit riding for the day after that.
I could have gone to the doctor, or asked around to see if any friends had advice on this matter, but I thought since I don't feel all that bad I can deal with it myself. So this was my self-prescribed healing procedure for the last 2 weeks, it's no wonder it didn't work...
1. Go home and cook dinner, go to bed a little early. No puking or other crazy symptoms, just a headache and feeling tired.
2. Get up at 6, feel pretty OK, eat breakfast and go to work as usual. It's raining, so we drive around looking for mosquitoes for a little while and then go back to clean the office for the afternoon.
3. Get up the next day feeling a little better, go to work again. Still raining so it's another easy day without much walking. Do some super mellow restorative yoga after work.
4. Go to work, feeling great, hike around in the woods quite a bit. So far so good. After work is where I went totally wrong: I got home and felt so amazing that I decided to go for a "little" cross country ride. Without this I probably would have been feeling a lot better by the end of the week. But it had just rained for 2 days straight and the trails had to be soooooo good! I couldn't ignore the devil on my shoulder telling me it will be just fine, go ride and have fun, so that's what I did.
5. Get up the next morning and felt pretty bad, head pounding worse than even the day after my crash, but still went to work. Same with the next day, feeling slightly better. It still would have been a good idea to take a couple of days off work.
6. Kick around the house all weekend and try to do a little gardening. Feeling better.
7. Go back to work Monday, feel all right, repeat for the rest of the week. Not feeling much improvement by any means but able to get things done.
8. Make a trip with Kit up to Ashland to spend time with my parents over the weekend. Feel all right so I go on a short road ride and feel not so good after, mostly tired. Walking around the next day doesn't feel great either. Nice job!
9. Back to work on Monday, feeling kinda yucky by Wednesday. Kit's friend freaks me out by mentioning brain bleeding; I leave work early and go to the urgent care center.
The doctor tells me, not exactly in so many words, that I'm being a complete idiot and doing too much too soon, that's why I'm still feeling like crap. Boy do I feel dumb because I had such an improvement in those first few days and that first bike ride definitely set me back a whole lot. Imagine what I would feel like if I had just taken a few days off work and hung out in the house being mellow like I'm doing now? In two and a half weeks I'm literally right back where I started and then back even a few more steps.
As far as not letting myself recover properly, it's a nasty habit that I'm sure a few other athletes deal with who are not under direct supervision of a coach or other trainer. It's something I've struggled with before, most notably with a strained psoas muscle that took 4 months to get mostly healed, and a sprained thumb that took me out for almost the whole summer in 2010. Soft tissue injuries are a challenge too since they take so darn long to heal; it's hard to tell what state they're in without getting MRI scans which seem totally unnecessary for something as trivial as a thumb sprain. I've learned this lesson the hard way so many times that I'm really hoping this is the last time, that I'm finally on the right track. In the meantime I've gotten close to 24 hours of sleep in the last two days, and most of my waking time was lying in a dark room doing nothing, and I do feel much better. Now I'm restless enough to not feel like sleeping any more, though I'm still moving slowly around the house and not feeling like doing laundry or other chores quite yet, and I'm feeling like it's safe to open the computer for a little bit and write something because it's been over a month since my last post.
Apparently the few times I've conked my head but felt fine the next day also count as concussions, so the doctor asks me if I've considered swimming or stand up paddleboarding as alternate sports. Of course he didn't have a definite answer as to when I might be able to ride a mountain bike, leading me to believe it might be quite a long time, and maybe not leaving the ground quite as much...there may be a switch to Enduro racing in my future or maybe even back to cyclocross, we shall see. It's another life lesson to have things going along fine, having a great time and feeling really good about how the season is progressing, and then suddenly you're out of the game and considering what to do without something that's been such a major part of life for so long. It doesn't sound like I will have to give up riding on the dirt entirely, but possibly for the summer and until next season. Luckily there is a multitude of other fun things to do around here that aren't going fast down a hill on bikes.
Anyhow, I'm going to go back to cuddling with the dog on the couch and contemplating the meaning of life, bicycles, and the hazards of riding downhill. On a positive note, I may have an opportunity to get into some other neat adventures this summer that I've been wanting to do for a while that don't involve riding bikes. But that's still a ways out, I have to make it to swimming first...
Random musings and tales of adventure, and maybe a mountaintop snack or two...
