This head injury is foreign grounds for me.  I have never experienced something like this and now that I am, I’m not too big on the whole thing.  It’s a slow process that makes a lot of unexpected turns.  I’ve been hurt a fair amount racing bikes.  Maybe more than other people, I’m not sure.  For sure I’ve been doing it a lot longer than most, so maybe dividing duration by age, I’m still okay.  I know the last 3 or 4 years haven’t been all that great.

Anyway, I was looking for a picture to post about getting bit by a dog and then I found the post below.  It seemed kind of like what I was going to say in the dog bite story, so I decided to just post it.

I Don’t Bounce So Well Now

I’m not actually sure if I don’t bounce so well or I have less patience to deal with the hit, but whatever the reason, I seem to be struggling mentally a little more with this injury (broken hip) than I have historically. It is so stupid to have a preconceived idea of a time frame I should be on when it is sort of completely made up by me. But, that is the way I’ve done it over the years, so it’s hard to change it now. I’ve written a post before about this subject, racing hurt, or maybe more appropriately called getting hurt racing or recovering from injury.

When I was an intermediate, junior 13-14, I went up to Milwaukee to race Superweek. It was my first race trip out of Kansas. I did pretty well the first couple races, but fell during my 3rd race and broke my collarbone. We loaded up and went back home. I saw an orthopedic surgeon back in Kansas and he said everything looked good. I asked him if I could still race if I could stand the pain and he said he didn’t see any reason I shouldn’t. So, we loaded back up and drove back up to Milwaukee and I raced the National Championships just a few days later, with a clavical strap cinched down super tight. During the race, I was off the front with Jeff Bradley and my arms fell asleep. I crashed and Jeff went on to win the race. It was a different era of medical advise back in those days it seems.

We’ve been downloading a bunch of old cycling pictures and media to digital form the last few days. It is sort of strange seeing the photos and not thinking it was that long ago. It really wasn’t compared to a universal time frame, but compared to a human’s lifetime, it is a big percentage. I found a photo from the British Milk Race, after I’d hit a stationary car at 100 km/hr. I was pretty broken up. I remember being super disappointed not being able to finish the race, but don’t remember having this withdrawal mindset two weeks later.

That time, after returning back to the US, I went to altitude to acclimate, so when I could ride, I could train effectively at altitude because the Coor’s Classic was less than 2 months away. I had a broken collarbone, leg and hand, plus a wicked concussion. Right now, looking back it seems virtually impossible that I could get back to a resemblance of race form in that short of time, considering I needed nearly the whole time to heal up. But, I did ride the Coor’s race, pitifully at first, but came around the 2nd week and finished up alright.

I know I’m older and heal slower now and I know that I don’t really have any real need to rush anything. The season now is nearly 365 days a year now, so I can just start whenever I fell up to it. It would be nice to have a goal, a race, to have a realistic time frame for reentry.

I’ve been getting a few emails and comments here about whether it is time that I just hang it up, the sport. It didn’t even cross my mind. Cyclingnews did an article with Taylor Phinney, who broke his leg the same day as I broke my hip. I’m not injured nearly as bad as Taylor and of course, am not in the same situation in cycling as he is either, but we do have the same mindset somewhat. He says, “I’m in physiotherapy and I’m way ahead of schedule, in fact they’re forcing me to chill out,” Phinney said. “There isn’t much for me to do except for rehabilitation.”

So, I’m antsy to get moving more. I’ve been riding this handcycle the last couple days. It is way slow and much harder than riding a bicycle, but it is super nice getting out under my own power. I’m sort of surprised I’m not walking yet without crutches. It seems nearly impossible, but I am getting better. It is way easier putting my pants on and getting up and down out of a chair.

Benjamin Franklin said, “Happiness depends more on the inward disposition of mind than on outward circumstances.” It is so true, I really don’t have much to complain about.

Laid up in a hospital in Whitby England after hitting the car below.

And this was the car I hit at the British Milk Race. It came out about as bad as I did.

This photo was taken the morning before the two pictures above. Both Andy Paulin and I, behind me in the National Team jersey, hit the car at warp speed.

Photo from a newspaper article of me riding rollers with a broken collarbone before Nationals.

I’ve sort of taken some grief the last couple months since I crashed and fractured my skull without wearing a helmet.   I guess it should be expected.  People are pretty opinionated about their positions on wearing a helmet while riding a bike.  Probably the same with riding a motorcycle I’d guess.  Anyway, I thought about writing about it, then figured I’d wait until next year, which is now.

I’m not big on wearing a helmet.  I never liked it and still probably don’t.  I think I understand the risk/reward deal about helmet usage, but am not sure I really ever took that much into account.

I started riding, then racing, in the pre-helmet era.  When I first started, the only helmet that nearly everyone raced in was a leather strap helmet, or hairnet, as it was called.  We never wore them until we absolutely had to.

That changed when the USCF passed the “hard helmet” rule.  I was on the USCF board of directors and voted for the change of rule.  I sort of wrote a post about it a couple years ago.  I wasn’t big on it, but as it was presented to us, bike racing was going to seize to exist in the US if we didn’t make the rule change.  That was really a fabrication, but it was probably for the good. The European riders didn’t like the whole deal, but eventually, the rules were changed worldwide and everyone had to race, full time, with a helmet.

Anyway, I’ve never trained with a helmet.  I just don’t like the way it feels and really like riding much more without it.  Like I said above, I am fully aware of the risks.  I could show you a few papers on how much safer a helmet really is while riding a bike, but like all things, those papers wouldn’t change a person’s formulated opinion.

I’ve crashed hard quit a few times, wearing a helmet and not.  I flipped over my bars over 100kph in England, with only a strap helmet on and was out for a while.  I broke my collarbone, leg, hand and was pretty concussed.  But I didn’t fracture my skull.  That was while wearing virtually nothing.

This past crash is pretty indefensible in the helmet discussion.  I hit a dog at around 30 mph and flipped directly into the pavement, head first.  A pretty unusual crash.  First time in all the years I’ve been riding.  I don’t hope to ever do it again.

Do I wish I was wearing a helmet on that day?  Absolutely.  I wish I was wearing a motorcycle helmet even.  Obviously, after the fact, anything I could have done different to change the outcome of that crash, I would gladly sign up for now.  But I wasn’t wearing a helmet, so I don’t have that option.

Saying that, do I promise to wear a helmet forever after now?  Probably not.  Am I going to wear a helmet training and racing for the next few months, or maybe a year?  Absolutely.  But, I can’t promise, publically, that I am never going to ride a bicycle without a helmet ever again.  That most likely wouldn’t be true.

Maybe wearing a helmet training for the near future will warm me up to the whole deal?  I would like that.  Really.  I just don’t like riding as much with a helmet, so I never did.  Maybe that will change now.  I can only hope.

Even after we passed the hard helmet rule, here in the US, if the race was a “Pro” race, we could race without them.

This is the same even, the Coor’s Classic, 5 years earlier.  Me following Eric Heiden.

Andy (Hampsten), on his way to winning the Giro in 1988. Looks like a day to wear if there is one?

My strap helmet.

In my defense, here is a picture from Holland, where cycling is much more “popular” than here in the US. The article is about how overcrowded bike lanes are, not about why 95% of the people don’t wear helmets.