“Well Mr Stivala, I am not sure as your X-RAY is a little inconclusive but I would say you have a fractured scaphoid…” This is soooo not what I wanted to hear 🙁 The conversation should have gone “Man up for god sake, you have a bit of a swollen paw and some bruising heading your way. It will be fine by the weekend.”
For those that I don’t chat with on Strava, you won’t know that I managed to fall off my bicycle twice yesterday… In one ride. I know, even for me!! And yes I will be getting stabilisers.
The problem (if you actually care in between your tears of laughter 🤣) was that the cleat on my left shoe became loose and partly off. ‘On’ enough to clip in, but loose enough such that during a right hand turn in the middle of Bedford, in a yellow box junction, it was impossible to turn my ankle far enough to unclip. And as we all know, when you are properly committed to stopping, you don’t have that long to unclip…
A proper trip down memory lane to the early days of cycling with cleats!
Luckily I managed to cushion the bike and stop it hitting the tarmac too hard. A couple of scuffs but I did a good job of breaking it’s fall…
At the time I thought the main issue, other than trying to free my feet (those cleats were going nowhere…) and get up and off the road, were the cuts and road rash on my leg. My wrist hurt a bit from where I landed on it… But no blood.
Roll forward to this morning and very different story. Very swollen, very ouchie and couldn’t even pick up a mobile phone in that hand.
Did the manly thing and went into the office… In order to get as much sympathy as possible. But eventually was persuaded to go to “urgent care” and from there A&E… The rest as they say is history.
Of course I now have the problem of training and trying to get some definitive info on how long this nonsense will take to sort out. Not a chance of swimming this week, but obviously can run (well to my normal limited ability). I asked the nurse if I could cycle and she replied by asking did I think I could before… Clearly she sees a second career for herself on stage! Funny how you can go off people…
D’Huez is 12 weeks and a training camp in France in three. This is not good timing.
I think tomorrow will be spent finding some “accelerated solutions” or at least a definitive diagnosis. One step at a time. Figure out what it is, the figure out what I will do about it.
What I have learned from this, and you might want to think about, is how often I check the bolts on my cleats. Go on… Tell me everyone does that all the time and it’s just me. Go on make my day 😉
