man, I want to ride my bike.
for once, the weather wasn't actually too bad today - no rain, nice temperature and dry roads. And it would have been a great day for a wee spin. Unfortunately I'm not supposed to ride till 10 days are up... or get my wound wet... and I think sweat counts... so no turbo trainer either.... :-(

Anyways Cathy took advantage of it and got out on her wheels... newly set up with a shorter stem to make a more upright riding position and I think it worked out a lot better for her. excellent!

3 more days to go.... in the meantime, some bike porn :

victory favours those that take the pains....

and man... have I taken the pain. that has to guarantee at least a placing in a race sometime soon..... yeah, so all surgery done on me now... and i'm left with a nice cut and a large numb section on my shoulder.

it apparently went well, and quick... only an hour till it was done and about 2 in recovery.
then I got back to the ward and my god... how it hurt. never experienced anything like that before... it hurt like hell. many many drugs later... it still hurt like hell. I actually actively sought injections in my arse to control the pain. madness.

anyhoo... its done now, and recovery is coming on well... i'm out of the sling and have a fairly large range of movement going on which is excellent... still about a week before i'm allowed on the bike though :-( but it feels like I could do the turbo now... but i'm not supposed to get the wound wet at all... and considering how much I sweat on the turbo.... :-)

back on the bike

so today was a trip to the fracture clinic... oh how useful the NHS are. I got poked, prodded and the doc said, its not as broke as it was and its healing. Man, what a useful guy. I bet at the obvious statement parties he wins all the time!

Oh he also told me not to ride my bike.
Yeah... right. As I cycled up there, then got back on and rode to work for the first time since the crash. 3 and 1/2 weeks later... not too bad.

And I do have to say it has put me in such a good mood. Looking forward to the run home in about 5 mins too... gonna go the longer way and see how it feels... I have the lyrca goodness ready to go.

I guess I'm a tad blaise ( i don't know how to spell it ) about it all.. as its getting fixed *properly* on monday. Bupa... I choose you! Titanium plate attack! (odd pokemon reference for anyone who wondered...)

Cheery bye. I'm off for a spin on my wheels (which are curiously mistmatched today..). :-)

motivation?

ha. after saying irregular updates and I do two in one day... who knew?

anyways... in the cause of motivation for getting back to racing, i'm considering a new bike! Because I need one.... (!). Only having three road bikes already....
Even so... its white and it would be pimp:

one armed banditry

so typing one handed really sucks. but i'm getting surprisingly fast at it... even so updates to this will be irregular for a while yet.

news:
after the debacle that was the NHS and their docs... I decided to go and get checked out through bupa... so the guy who looked at me has decided to treat this agressively, i.e. cut me open, manipulate the bones, so that they don't heal twisted and overlapping, then titanium plate it. nice.

basically what this means is i can be back on the road about a week after the op :-)
the op is on july 7th and frighteningly enough i'm looking forward to it!

I also have a fracture clinic appointment this friday too, so we'll go to that if even just to check out the x-rays and see how quickly I am healing even though it doesn't really matter anymore.

i am going to be bionic :-)


also at the moment, sleeping is getting difficult again, this thing is starting to heal to a certain extent and now i'm getting more restless in bed... doh. more nights of this to come... and I'm starting to contemplate sleeping with the sling off.

anyhoo... back to porridge.

things that suck.

crashing. crashing really fecking sucks.

ok, so it was on the night of the 10th of June, i was just starting to feel like i was getting some shape back after our honeymoon, had done some good rides, rode the carrick crit and finished whic was good going as it was really tough, went down to track racing and was having a good night, then the final team pursuit race began...

i took off after john and david neill, pulling hard on the pedals, left foot pops out.

interlude:
for those that don't know track racing is done on a track bike, fixed gear no brakes. you pedal backwards, they go backwards. in other words when they start they don't like to stop and there's a lot of inertia.
:interlude ends

left foot goes down, bike flips me over and i slam into the ground coming out of a sprint, i land on my shoulder and head and then someone else crashes into me (he was ok though.. thankfully).

i'm a bit dazed, nothing is hurting yet, can't move my arm, my head hurts.. oops.
the guys get me off the track to the grass... i'm covered in road rash, this is sore. they get me sitting up and put my arm into position... i almost pass out. they get a sling on me and somehow ring cathy to let her know i'm badly hurt and anthony is coming to get her.

somehow, i get back to the car and essentially drift in and out of coherence.
cathy arrives and we get to the hospital where i wait hours to get seen, obviously the drunks fighting and puking get preference(!).

anyways.. its bad. the bones are well seperated and i'm still bleeding and making no sense. the try to put a sling on, but i can't wear it as it pulls too much and i keep turning grey and almost passing out... so they try to get me to the observation ward as i drift in and out of being awake.

i passed out eventually in the bed with some drugs and got a few hours sleep, next day i get home around lunchtime after getting much stronger painkillers, but even so getting a new sling on still makes me faint with pain.

you can see the distance between the bones there...

the next few days are spent in a blur of drug induced sleep and its only now, a week and a half later that i'm coherent enough and well enough physically to be walking about and doing some things for myself.... road rash is the hardest thing to try and sleep with... never mind that each time you move it hurts like hell...

it also bleeds... well, oozes is a better word for it but it sticks to
everything.


i'm starting to recover now though and want to get back to activity... the cuts are healing too and there appears to be light at the end of tunnel :-)


cathy stayed with me all the time and has been amazing through it all... thanks also to the guys at track, anthony, rachel, brian for their help too on the night.

back to reality...

well after a nice long break... we're back to work! which fairly sucks... but its gotta be done! must pay the bills....

Some wedding pics here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/voodoo2/

So... now its time to lose the wedding weight and get back to racing the bikes I think! Did some training on Friday... which pretty much involved me extracting gunk from lungs and tubes etc... then the club run on saturday, which was good actually.... 63 odd miles at a good pace and I felt a lot better.

There's a race tonight out in Carrickfergus... the town centre crit, so I'm going to give it a go! never ridden a crit before... apparently its sprint, brake, turn, sprint, brake turn, repeat repeat.... and its generally mental from the gun. If nothing else it'll get me back into the way of things! Which I need as the Newry three day is rapidly approaching!