09-07-08

It was a beautiful Sunday morning when I mounted my trusty Raleigh 10-speed and headed out for a 25-mile ride. Thunder storms the night before had cleared away the humidity, the sun was shining, and the temperature was perfect.

About 5 miles into my ride, I turned onto a favorite tree-lined road. Unfortunately it was covered with wet leaves from the previous night’s storms. The slippery surface and my narrow wheels were not a good match.

So I turned around and mentally remapped my route.

The journey begins…

Traffic was light on the first road I chose and I was feeling stronger than usual, so I pushed myself and did some intervals for the next few miles. Then I slowed my pace and recovered as I approached the next turn.

That’s when I realized something I’d missed in my hurried rerouting:

The next turn would put me on an extremely busy road I had never ridden before on a weekend when a major event was taking place in the area.

Hmmm.

Perhaps not my best choice.

But now it was my only choice…

Onto a Road I’d Never Ridden Before…

As my initial anxiety due to the increased traffic calmed a bit, I settled in and enjoyed the more open space and the road’s recently repaved shoulders. My newfound comfort level led me to look for another place to test myself a bit.

That opportunity came around the next curve in the form of a long straight stretch of road ahead with no side roads or shopping entrances. This would be a place where I could test my limits by pushing through a long interval, aka it was exactly what I was looking for that morning.

Testing my limits was a big part of my cycling. Nothing felt better than riding a stretch of road faster than I had in the past or in a higher gear. Those little tests told me my efforts were in fact leading to improvements. So every long ride included a handful of hard exertions of varying lengths.

Choosing my sprinting locations was a simple process—find a long stretch of road with limited traffic and some way to monitor the length of the interval i.e., a side road, a farmhouse, some utility poles, or maybe a road sign. Seeing the end point kept me going and the intermediate milestones helped me understand how far I’d gone as I monitored and managed my body’s response to my effort.

Pursuing a New Personal Best…

I stopped for a minute or two, double-checked everything mechanical, drank some water, and readjusted my helmet. That routine was a part of my mental preparation for the challenging minutes ahead. A brief closing of my eyes to envision my hard ride set my mind.

I stepped back onto the bike and looked ahead, chose my end point and a couple of utility poles along the way as milestones. Then I clipped in and started pedaling, quickly working my way through the gears as I approached the pole I had chosen to mark the start of my interval.

Since I was on a road I’d never ridden, I did everything I could not to pay attention to the stats on my cycling app and just focused on riding as hard as I could…

…Passing the first of my three chosen utility poles I knew I was at least on my usual pace and pushed a bit harder.

…Approaching the second utility pole I checked traffic and since traffic was light, decided to put my head down and jam on the pedals with everything I had to really push myself to the limit.

…Glancing up briefly as I neared the final utility pole I was confident this was going to be a new personal best, so I kept pushing, passed the final pole, then reached down and stopped the timer on my cycling app.

I pedaled slowly as I checked my results…

BOOM!

I had just ridden my first ever two-mile interval at an average speed of almost 19 miles per hour.

As I pondered my success I slow pedaled for a bit and looked at the road ahead.

The traffic was extremely busy around the next intersection, as I was nearing an annual celebration at the Nanticoke Indian Museum (aka the major event in the area that day).

Entering Defensive Cycling Mode…

As I passed the museum, something caught my eye in the shopping complex. A guy returned the nozzle at a gas pump, quickly jumped into his car, then headed towards the entrance onto the road I was riding on.

I watched closely as his hurried pace suggested he might quickly enter the roadway without paying much attention to oncoming traffic, especially a lone cyclist. Over the years I’d learned if you could make even brief eye contact with a driver seeking to enter the road you were on, you had a chance to stop them from pulling out in front of (or directly into) you.

As I checked the parking lot again, the guy heading out was about 30 yards from the road and we made brief eye contact. That eased my mind a bit as now knew he was aware of my presence, so he wouldn’t run over me because he had seen me.

I quickly checked my rearview mirror and noticed the traffic light had changed, so cars would soon be passing by me on my left. Then I returned my eyes to the road to check the traffic coming toward me.

After not seeing any cars on the road heading in our direction since I had passed through the intersection, there was suddenly a car turning into the shopping center directly in front of me.

Instantly, Everything Changed…

My mind immediately shifted into a level of overdrive I’d never experienced before. Though the car was only about 20 feet from me, my brain zoomed through my available options…

…I could go to my right and enter the shopping center, but I would likely end up being hit by the guy I’d been monitoring who was heading toward the exit.

…I could turn to my left and hope to miss the car in front of me, but I would probably be hit by one of the cars that had just gotten a green light through the intersection.

…I could lay the bike down, sacrifice a lot of skin, get some bruises, and who knows what else, but I might slide under the car and that would be disastrous.

The final option was the most ridiculous—maybe I could pedal really fast like I did in my earlier interval and get past the car without getting hit.

Suddenly everything shifted into slow motion (yes, all this happened in about 20 feet)…

…I pondered the pain from road rash if I ended up going over the hood and sliding down the road.

…I considered whether I could somehow squeeze the brakes and steer into the car and avoid a serious impact.

And I realized none of those thoughts mattered, because I was going to hit the car that was now directly in front of me.

Wait, What is Happening?

Uh Oh…I am flying through the air, and I immediately think, this isn’t as bad as I was expecting…

…my body hits the windshield…my helmeted head first, then my right shoulder, followed by my mid-back and my hips…

the windshield begins to give and I assume I’m going to end up in the driver’s lap…

Nope…

I’m flying again and my head is pointed straight down…I have no idea what the brown thing I am looking at is (turns out it was the hood of the car)…

A voice in my head screams…curl up and roll, curl up and roll, curl up and roll…

I hit the ground on my right shoulder, then my helmet hits the ground as the rest of my body does the same...

My head bounces off the pavement…

It feels like my helmet is gone, then my head hits the ground again...

Momentum takes over my body mass and somehow pushes me back onto my feet.

I am now standing less that 10 feet from the car. The driver has jumped out. She’s screaming “I didn’t see him. I didn’t see him. I didn’t see him.”

Over and over again…

and all I can think of is the phone commercials that asked “Can you hear me now?"

I walk over to my bike, open the under-seat pouch, and remove my cell phone so I can call my wife and let her know she needs to come get me.

Time Stands Still…

As I just stand there processing what just happened, I feel something on my right shoulder and turn to see a woman with pressing a roll of paper towels into my shoulder. She tells me I am bleeding and suggests I should go over and sit down on the curb.

I grudgingly accompany her to the curb, sit down, and watch a small group of people gather around to see if I am ok.

The paramedics arrive and make their way to where I am sitting. They seem very surprised that I seem to be ok as they perform their various checks.

After a few minutes, an ambulance arrives and the paramedics let me know I need to go the hospital to get checked out.

The first guy out of the ambulance calls out: “We’ve called for the helicopter,“ as he assumes I have head injuries and need to be air-lifted to a trauma center.

They paramedic responds: “We don’t need it, he’s ok.”

To which the paramedic responds: “Dude, did you see the car?” Which I interpret as the car being damaged to a degree that he assumes the cyclist might be barely alive (to this day, I wish I had paid attention to what the car looked like).

Two hours later I was released from the hospital with no broken bones, a few minor cuts and bruises, a destroyed Raleigh 10-speed, a helmet fractured in 7 places, and a story that easily could have turned out much differently.

The Post Mortem…

The truth is I was very fortunate that day, despite what happened…

…When the car pulled in front of me my front tire went between its front tire and the back of the wheel well.

…The momentum of the car torqued the bike around throwing me into the air and onto the car windshield.

…The abrupt stopping of the car tossed me into the air and kept me from being cut up by the windshield’s broken glass.

…The continued momentum from the impact got me quickly back on feet and I didn’t suffer much road rash.

Today I still ride, but I gave up road cycling a few years ago and now only ride on bike trails and established marked paths that help drivers remember to share the road. I did give up my road bike five years ago in favor of an e-bike (and, yes, I still miss it…but the roads where I live are far to busy for me to even consider riding on them).

The Earned Lessons—As is typical with earned lessons, they reveal themselves at over time. Here are five extracted from my 09-07-08 experience:

1. Never, and I do mean NEVER, get on a bike anywhere without a helmet. As I noted above, mine broke in 7 places as it absorbed the impact my head would have endured if I weren’t wearing it. Oh, and in case you didn’t know, helmets have a life expectancy, so replace them regularly.

2. My initial fear of getting back on a bike was overcome early on when my wife very wisely insisted I go on a short bike ride the following week. It scared me in the moment, but I am grateful we took that ride because it allowed me to return to my passion.

3. Always be vigilant because even when you think you are on top of things, something can blindside you in a way you never expected. This is true in just about anything we do in life, and developing the capacity to quickly process things around you might save your life someday (I certainly believe it saved mine).

4. Our minds have massive capacity to process information at speeds we seldom experience. My experience in the 20 feet before I hit the car led me trust my inner voice and thoughts much more than I did prior to that day.

5. As the saying goes, the body remembers and reminds us of the bumps and bruised we’ve accumulated on our journey. Since my accident I have lived with a right hip that regularly mis-behaves, causes me pain, and limits my activity until it gets back to normal. The same is true for my right shoulder.

Thank you for reading…see you next week.