Since I began biking almost two years ago, I’ve been lucky when it comes to injuries. I haven’t had any to speak of. Oh, I know I’ve griped about my numb toe too often. (By the way, those new shoes of mine have indeed taken care of that problem. On a two and a half hour ride last weekend, I had barely a twinge out of it.) There was some soreness after my crash last fall, but nothing to keep me from riding.
That’s a nice departure from my running days, when I used to develop injuries fairly often. If I could, I’d run through the pain. Sometimes that was fine — sometimes, it aggravated the problem.
I bring this up, because I got a recent email from reader Don, in California. He said:
Last week I injured my back and left hip, I believe it came from having my left foot too toed in while riding, which caused aggravation along the tendon that runs in that area. I took two days off, iced and did Tylenol. I’m fine. But that still leads to the question of how to handle biking injuries?
We look on with amazement as Lance Armstrong has surgery for a collarbone fracture that was worse than first thought, then gets patched up with a five-inch steel plate and a dozen screws, and is expected to be on the trainer in a week, and back to racing in eight to twelve weeks. But that’s Lance.
How about you? What kind of injuries have you had to deal with, and what was recovery like? What did you do to come back, and how long did it take?