One of Tim Huckaby’s favorite sayings when out mountain biking can be paraphrased; ‘If you are really pushing you’ll leave a little blood on the mountain’. The idea being that since really pushing it on a mountain bike tends to involve taking some risks and occasionally crashing… if you’ve gone all out somebody managed to crash.
Pictured below is my knee after a recent ride, the question though with any such injury is how did I manage to get these gouges in my leg?
Well at this point you are probably assuming that I was on my mountain bike, after all I haven’t laid down my road bike since I was like 13… well until Sunday that was. Yes this is the visible portion of the painful results of a road bike crash. I was training for the Tour de Cure. As part of my training every year I head out to Sleeping Indian road (in Oceanside, CA) and ride my bike up the rather brutal climb on that road. To get there my route takes me out College Ave to Old River Road and then it intersects with Sleeping Indian road. Near this intersection the Old River Road narrows briefly and a curb is added, just prior to where I need to make a left.
On Sunday I was rolling along at around 18mph as I approached and needed to check behind me before moving out into the lane of traffic. As I did this I realized I had a car literally right behind me, and he caught me by surprise – at the same time my slight reaction put me into some sand on the side of the road. At that point my first thought was ‘ turn into the road to regain control’ – to which my second thought was ‘no there is a car there’.
I’d like to put in a quick aside here for those who drive cars. Many times cars will stay behind us for a while. I realize sometimes its hard to find a good time to pass, but in all honesty I would rather have you get past me sooner than stay behind me so you can ‘see me’. The problem being that once you are past me you are no longer a threat to me and I can be out of your thoughts… with you behind me how I react to a sudden road hazard changes – because with a choice between hitting the ground or risking getting hit by a car – well the ground looks mighty inviting.
At any rate I again corrected toward the edge of the road knowing that there was a large open dirt space on my right – but forgetting about that annoying curb. This took me from bad to worse – because the edge of my front tire contacted this rounded ‘curb’ made from blacktop. Which brought my next thought – TURN LEFT go into the road, followed as you might guess by the thought “NO!”. Which was entirely appropriate since this was just about the point that my tire finally caught hard enough to trigger the chain reaction that resulted in me separating from the bike and getting the first hand experience of just how ‘inviting’ that dirt patch on the side of the road really was.
After jumping back up from being on my back with my head toward the road, and my bike remaining (not sure how I managed it) sitting on the side of the road, I faced the cards which had now stopped. Make no mistake it must have been an awesome crash to watch because no less than the first 3 cars in back of me asked me if I was OK… to which I answered yes – even though I wasn’t quite sure yet at that point. Note I ALWAYS keep my cell phone with me when I ride alone so I had been less than OK or had my bike been inoperable, I would have called home/help as required.
So as with any wreck the first minute or so is just collecting the name of the ‘bus’ which just hit you and really deciding if you are OK. Then you begin the real processing of how is my bike? When I wrecked I was 11 miles into a planned 45 mile ride, and could have either turned back and headed home goal unfulfilled or pushed on to get in my climb and long ride. So I did a quick look over of my bike and sure enough within about 5 minutes I was pretty sure I was actually OK. I was amazed in some ways – my bike appeared pretty much undamaged. I did a more thorough check as I remounted and made a quick spin as I was deciding what to do.
Now aside from the obvious damage - most of my impact had been on my back. One of the tricks I learned mountain biking is that when landing “Use the camel pack.” By which I mean, even on my road bike I show my slavery to ‘style’ by wearing a big ugly mountain bike camel pack to carry my water and stuff instead of a water bottle and the pockets in my jersey. The advantage appeared again, because unlike my leg which has some significant scratches the only scratches above the waist are a few minor ones on my right arm. Which is impressive because at first I wondered if I had broken my collar bone and over time it’s my right shoulder and my neck which have hurt the worst. (Another note my helmet didn’t hit the ground – another untouched item) The camel pack took most of the impact, that and I vaguely remember trying to get my right leg onto that curb – a memory driven in part my the pain in my right heel.
At any rate given my experience mountain biking as I got started and things appeared to be good I decided to press onward. So I started up Sleeping Indian road. As I was climbing Sleeping Indian I noticed that my front tire seemed a bit deformed. I had tested with my brakes and didn’t seem to have a problem with the wheel at slow speeds… but on I pedaled noticing as my front wheel spun in front of me that it just didn’t look right. It kept seeming like there was an odd little bump on the left hand side of my tire – which was odd since the curb was on the right when I wrecked, below is a still picture looking down on my front wheel (taken after the ride… notice the deformation).
While the wheel was spinning of course there was the question of what is that ‘blip’ that keeps spinning past… but the good news was I passed my test for the ride. I made it up Sleeping Indian without stopping on the climb. This is my test because back in 2003 when I bought my bike and started getting ready for my first Tour de Cure I set out on a ride that included this hill without knowing what I was getting into. I stopped about 1/3 of the way up the hill and again at about 2/3’s and of course at the top. Today like every year since I’ve climbed the hill – non-stop and as in Sunday kept on going without stopping after reaching the stop. This is a good sign for me being read for the Tour de Cure on the 18th.
My next warning came on the resulting down hill. Now at speed when I pressed the front brakes to slow down I got a clicking… both a sound a a feeling. That clicking is something I’d felt before. I had it when I managed to bend a rim on my road bike. Not a subtle bend like you correct by adjusting spoke tension but a dent in the side of your wheel that is causing the brakes to hit an uneven surface. Cursing mentally because I’m picturing a need to purchase a new wheel, not a cheap fix. It also meant I had to be careful using the front brakes since they could in theory catch and send me flying (again).
Once I got to the end of Sleeping Indian I pulled off for a quick break and to figure out just how bad the damage was and that deformation well it was caused by what would be some significant sidewall damage to my tire,
You’ll also note there is a small amount of what I later determined to be negligible damage to the wheel itself, but as you can see from the next photo the tire damage wasn’t in just one spot it was pretty much the entire right side of the tire.
So at this point, you’re probably thinking – hmm failing side wall, bleeding, shoulders and neck starting to hurt – Bill headed back. However, you just aren’t considering just how stubborn I can be. I was still only around 15 miles into the ride, so I continued on. I made some checks at 20 miles and was careful to avoid my front brakes – after all – the clicking I head wasn’t the rim, it was the deformed sidewall hitting the front brakes. Thus each time I heard that I was risking a sidewall failure as the sidewall collided with the braking mechanism.
Things went well till about mile 40 when I pretty much bonked. The fact that I couldn’t really breathe deeply combined with the general soreness of my right shoulder and neck made the last 5 miles – painful. However, I survived and yesterday I put a new tire on my bike. It rained this morning so I’m waiting until Thursday to head out for another ride.