Disaster strikes: I am out of the 25km race

You know how I have been talking about how I have been training for months for an "upcoming" trail race with my friends and how I have lost 15kg in the process of doing this training? Well, something absolutely awful happened just 2 days before the run and it is just crazy to me that the timing on this is what it is.

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According to the person that I was riding with the above image is kind of representative of what happened to me. I got airborne off of my bicycle early Friday morning when I was just trying to get a bit of cardio in the day before my flight to Thailand to compete in the race. I can't tell you exactly what happened because I was concussed in the crash and really don't remember a great deal of what happened until later I was in the hospital. I do know that I walked the bike home in a haze. I haven't been rendered unconscious very many times in my life, but i was truly the walking dead when it happened since while I was walking and talking, I have almost zero memory of it at all.

I do remember what happened right before I flew over the handlebars though, and it involved something I honestly should have been more aware of. Hindsight being 20/20 and all, I should have seen this coming or that is what I tell myself after the fact anyway.

I go riding early in the morning specifically to avoid traffic because traffic is crazy here. I was staying over to the side of the road but I guess I was staying too far to the side of the road because a motorbike zipped onto the road I was on and actually hit my front tire when they did so. I don't think the driver of the bike even looked before he merged and I didn't see them either because of an obstruction at the corner. When they made contact with my front tire it locked up my tire and well, that is the last thing I remember. I hit the ground hard with my head and while that seems pretty bad I guess I have a tough skull because I didn't get hurt that bad from that.

Unfortunately, other parts of me were hurt by that.

I suppose you would have to be a medical professional to make any sense of that but the small circle shows where I have a borken rib and the big circle at the top shows that I have 3 hairline fractures in my left shoulder. I can support almost zero weight with the left side of my body.

The crazy thing about this was that I went down so fast that I didn't even have time to attempt to protect my fall. You know how if you do fall that you will end up having some sort of "defensive wounds" such as tearing up the skin on your hands in some sort of automatic defense to your body? I don't have any of that. I have a mark on the back of my hand, and nobody breaks their fall with the back of their hand. At that point I can only assume I was "rag-dolled" or just lifelessly flipping around. I don't remember any of the getting up and walking away but according to my buddy that was riding with me, that is what I did. I guess I was on auto-pilot.

When I asked the doctor at the ER if I could do a running race on Sunday he said "are you serious? Of course not." And well, once I got home and lied down and the injection they gave me wore off, I understood where he was coming from. I am not in pain all the time, but if I try to move at all, then i am. I can't so much as pick myself up off of the bed if I need to use my left arm to do so. So yeah, attempting to do a 25km hill climb was not going to happen no matter what. I'm not a super-hero.

The timing on this crash and injury.. it's almost like the universe doesn't want me to be involved in this running race. I have been cycling in SE Asia for many many years and I have never crashed before. Why on Earth did it have to happen just 1 day before I was going to leave for this race.

At the moment my friends are doing the trail run right now and thankfully were able to find a replacement for me at the last minute so they don't lose the race entry fees.

As far as my recovery is concerned. I fear it is going to be a long road. I go in on Monday morning for a consultation with the head orthopedic doctor (bone doctor) and we will discuss if I need surgery or not. I am hoping not but I of course will take their word on this because they went to school for it and I didn't.

According to a medical professional in my extended family this sort of injury doesn't always need surgery and you can recover without it. However, if the doc says you need surgery and you don't get it, your bones can grow back in such a way that is going to cause problems for you for the rest of your life and I don't think anyone wants that now, do they?

This is all such a shock and a disappointment for me. This is one of the only times in my life that I have ever so closely followed a training program to accomplish anything of this sort in my life, so it kind of seems like Murphy's Law that this would be only the 3rd time in my life that I ended up hospitalized for bone-related issues in my near 50 years on this planet.

What terrible luck huh?

The only takeaway from this that I can really say is that if you are driving anything in Vietnam or even if you are just walking, presume that all vehicles on the road cannot see you and presume that every single corner holds danger in it. People do not yield here and I already knew this. It was just because of the fact that I couldn't see the guy on the bike until it was too late that this happened.

I suppose I'll be spending the next few months in close proximity with Nadi, and she will like that.. if we have to put some sort of silver-lining on this cloud.