Ouch!

There I was, riding along on my own on a recovery ride. I was doing about 15mph and was just thinking about the weekends riding that was to follow.

Suddenly, I realised that I was stopping quickly, and my shoulder was starting to hurt- a lot. I don't have the best shoulders after 6 clavicle fractures and nerve damage after various ops and a rather nasty paragliding crash.

What stopped me?

A tree.

A tree that the local "talent" had pulled down and left in the disused railway line that I was using to spin my legs out. I could see all of the branches covered in leaves as they were, in the twilight. But what I didn't see was the bare end of a bough of the tree, aiming squarely at me. It wasn't covered with leaves or fauna, and so it just blended in with the trail ahead.

A tree yesterday

It caught me, in the area under the deltoid, and once the arm had dislocated out of the shoulder joint, it fired me off of the back of the bike and sort of sideways, onto the side of the trail.

I lay there, gathering together my thoughts, whilst my shoulder slipped back into joint. My shoulders can withstand a lot wobbliness, as they have been out of joint more times than Pamela Anderson's Boobs have bounced in slow motion.

After a minute or so, I realised that everything was working well enough for me to pick myself up and start heading home. It was a wee while until I could get on my bike.

Anyway, enough of that!

Saturday, what a day!

We got up late and went to Cwmcarn. I did a few laps, and the efforts that were planned by Chris Eatough, for me. Bearing in mind that I did my WC2C 4 weeks ago, I felt really good. So, at the end of lactate tolerance rep, I felt like I was doing well. A steady, fast and comfortable pace was where I was, so I continued it, until the end of the lap, as a sort of xc race practice (a mild one). When I finished my lap, it was a PB!! All the better, since it was wet and slippy on almost all of the top sections.

I had a sore shoulder though.

Then Sunday.

The training ground

We went to, err, Cwmcarn.

Jo was on a hard ride day. So I hoped I could sit behind her and stay in my endurance zone. It was fine.

So we hammered around for a few laps, and then came home so that I could rebuild one bike's drive train, bleed another's brakes, change some pads, true up 2 sets of wheels and have an ice-cream!

Nice.

Next week is the Avalanche Enduro in Kielder. My mate, Clive, is organising it so it'll be great!