That definitely wasn't on the year's plan...

Well there I was out for my usual Saturday club ride a few weeks ago, happily riding along in the group, feeling good and enjoying the training but then all of a sudden with no idea how I find myself sitting on the road instead of on my bike with a shoulder that hurt like a (insert appropriate expletive!). It turns out that we had a bit of a "riding incident" which I still don't remember a thing about, but I'm told I did a fantastic superwoman flying impression - until I came to land and got it all wrong and came down on my head & shoulder instead of my feet!

Am ambulance had been called & so off I was hauled to hospital for what I assumed would just be some quick x-rays & sling (as I knew instantly I'd broken my collarbone having done it before from other sports) & then sent on my merry way.  However; it came as a very rude surprise to me that not only was my collarbone broken, but it was so badly broken that it required 9 screws to put it back together in the end, but the real kicker of the news was that it had punctured my lung!  Oh and just because that wasn't enough, they threw in at the end that I'd managed to break my shoulder blade as well!

So off I was hauled to the resuscitation unit, which was when it all got a little bit scary as I was immobilised for a while, but then once they decided I was stable & my head & neck were ok I was shipped off to the high dependancy unit where I spent the next 9 nights.  I ended up needing a chest tube & they had to reinflate my lung before they could put me under to fix my shoulder, which all ended up taking a week to do (long story!) and then a couple of days to make sure my lung stayed up & pain was under control etc before I was allowed home.

It meant I missed the All Nations tri (it happened while I was in hospital) and will miss London Revolution this months and Dragon Ride & Windsor tri next month and it's pretty doubtful I will be recovered & fit enough to do Vitruvian as it's minimum 6 weeks just to get back to normal activities such as driving and my physio has said I'm looking at a absolute minimum of 3 months to fully get back to swimming / biking / running, so I think it's safe to say this season has gone down the drain well & truly!!

So while I'm stuck at home recovering & being a one-armed bandit, please feel free to entertain & cheer me up with stories that ruined your race / season!!

Thanks all for the best wishes all; has to be said now that my shoulder is re-attached life is much more comfortable & now it's just waiting for the healing to happen then let the rehab begin!  Got a copy of all my x-rays & CT scans today; there are some funky 3D images of the damage in there, they look well cool!

Will - ow, ow & ow again!!!  That sounds horriffic   What on earth do they do to fix that (or don't I want to know?!)

Wolf - ouch, good luck!  Hopefully will mean you can come back better & stronger though?!

Rafiki - I don't know, I still havent seen her!!!   I'm told that she is ok though by the guy from the cycle club that has her & when I was talking to the guys in my local cycle shop they said looking at me chances are she is ok; they said normally the bike gets it or the rider gets it!

Ouchio, good to see it doesn't seem to have dampened your spirit. What you need to do is enter a nice IM next year.....

I don't have proper dramatic injury stories. I am more likely to be found scuppering marathon training by falling out of a pair of cork wedges after a significant amount of gin, or having a scarred hand for a year from a hot cup of tea / bike cleats on wet floor moment. A nice lady did drive into me at 70mph a few days before my first half IM, causing my car to be hit on three sides by various vehicles / items of road furniture, which was nice. Not sure if it counts though, as the race went ok as long as I only tried to breathe to one side....  

I've been told by my surgeon that marathons are deffo out from now on - so that means no more IMs. Ever.

 you said 9 screws, not 9 breaks. apologies.

Shaz life happens sometimes it's how we deal with it that counts. The inportant thing is your heroically put yourself between the pavement and your bike to stop it getting damaged. Plus you did a proper injury so you can get strange looks everytime you go past a metal detector at an airport. Hope you recover well and quickly but just make you take care.

Throught for you you could always go to the vit anyway and ever marshall and/or drink some wine watching everybody's pratfall, putting there helmut on before there top and transition and then wundering why they can't get there T-shirt on etc...  Depends if you would enjoy the day or if you would be thinking to much about what would happen if you where doing it?