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Vertigo — Part 1

10.25.2009 by Ray Niekamp // 1 Comment

Our new guest poster, Don Blount, is getting over a nasty crash. Not only did he crack a helmet — and a wrist — but he had to deal with an unexpected side effect.

BlountOnBikingI nearly always thought of vertigo as an Alfred Hitchcock movie starring Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak. At least that is until I came down with it. But when I awoke early Saturday Sept. 26 and the room was spinning, I had no idea that was what I was dealing with.

But let me back up a bit. Four days earlier, on the first day of fall, I had taken a tumble from my bike halfway through a 46-mile ride.

BikeI had ridden to a nature preserve and stopped to take in the scenery and eat. My legs felt good. I stopped at the Visitors’ Center to look for a trash can to discard a banana peel. There were no receptacles but there were plastic bags to put your trash in and take it out with you. I put the peel in one and stuffed in a jersey pocket. I got back on my bike and started on my return trip home. As I looked up I saw a car approaching and thought it would be a good idea to get as far to my right as possible. The walking path was clear and I began to drift over.

What I didn’t see was that there was a gap between the nice asphalt road and the cement walking path. My front wheel caught in it, and I went down.

Best I remember, I fell on my head and left side, fracturing my left wrist and getting some road rash on my left shoulder, hip and knee.

As I have said previously, I wouldn’t ride without a helmet. My injuries would’ve been more severe had I not been wearing one.

HelmetA couple of cracks are obvious in this shot.

The helmet did exactly what it was supposed to do. It absorbed the blow, cracking in about a half dozen places so my head would not. I still received a sizable bump on my head that would take a few weeks to fully heal.

My bike was fine aside from some torn bar tape and a scrape on a brake lever. I was able to gather myself and ride the 23 miles home, wrist and all.

I was less successful hiding the injuries from my wife.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Uh, nothing,” I replied. She followed me as I limped through the house.

“What’s wrong?” she demanded this time.

“Well,” I said, “If you must do something, help me take my jersey off because I can’t lift my arm.”

I managed to get in the shower and muffle my moans as I cleaned my road rash.

Sling2The next day my wrist was swollen and unusable and I went to see a doctor who put it in a soft support and my arm in a sling. I would miss work this day.

CastTwo days later, Friday, I saw an orthopedist who put my wrist in a cast. I picked purple as a color because my daughters like that color.

I went to sleep that night thinking the worst was behind me and that I’d have to figure out how to make do with a cast for a few weeks.

I didn’t know how wrong I was.

What else could afflict Don? Join us again tomorrow as Bike Noob  brings another installment of “Blount on Biking.”

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Categories // guest post, Injury Tags // Blount, guest post, Injury, vertigo

Cramps!

06.02.2009 by Ray Niekamp // 10 Comments

I’ve had one severe bout with cramps since starting biking, and it was no fun. Since then, I’ve always made sure I’ve had enough to eat and drink before starting a ride, and even though I’m still bad at drinking as often as I should when I’m in saddle, I do make an effort to drain one water bottle each hour.

But Sunday, I was on a morning ride with my friend David. On our return leg, he was sluggish. We made an extra stop at a convenience store so he could buy a bottle of electrolyte drink, and down most of it while we rested in the shade. We still had about 10 miles to get home, and at five, he told me to go on ahead, and not let his slow pace keep me back. I told him it was no problem, and I’d stick with him. But with two miles to go, the road widened and smoothed out. I speeded up, figuring he’d catch me at our usual Starbucks end-of-ride yakfest.

I got to Starbucks, ordered a large iced tea, and found a seat in a cool, shady spot to wait for David. I waited, and waited. I wondered if he’d just decided to go straight to his house and skip our drink. The “A” riders in our club, who’d been on a different route, started to pull in. I waited some more.

Then, David pulled up. He looked miserable. He said he’d had thigh cramps so bad just a mile away, they “brought him to his knees.” He sat down and stared straight ahead for awhile, then went inside to order a drink.

I’ve seen the cramps get David on previous rides, but nothing like this. Usually, we’ll stop and rest while he pops a few electrolyte tablets. The curious thing is, the cramps tend to hit him at the 35-mile mark. If we’re only going 20 or 30 miles, he’ll be fine. But stretch that to 35, and he’s toast.

“I’m having a tough one, Ray,” he said, as he felt another twinge in his thigh. But he had to get home, so he pulled himself up out of his chair, and got on the bike. Since he lives only a mile away, I figured he’d be fine.

Later on, I found that was not the case. He emailed me that he’d cramped up again on a long grade leading up to his street. He walked the bike for awhile, then got on and coasted the rest of the way home. The ride, he said, left him “shattered — absolutely the worst I ever had.”

David is not a newbie. He’s been riding for more than 15 years, and has several centuries under his belt. He’s been my riding mentor since I got into this sport. For breakfast, he had a peanut butter and banana sandwich, among other things.

David keeps some kind of electrolyte tablets in his seatbag — “etabs,” he calls them — and I’ve seen that companies like Hammer Nutrition carry electrolyte capsules. Other high sodium and potassium items like pickle juice and bananas are supposed to be effective at combating cramps. Have you had any experiences with cramping? If so, any recommendations for dealing with ones as serious as David’s?

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Categories // food, Injury Tags // cramp

Dealing with injury

03.26.2009 by Ray Niekamp // 5 Comments

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?

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Categories // Injury, soreness Tags // Injury, soreness

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