12th Week Mark

Well, ladies and gents, this is the official "12th week" of my rib injury. The point at which the doctors said if I hadn't raced and trained with my ribs and instead chose to couch it from late June on ..... I would be healed.

Couch it? Seriously? When I was at the peak of my cycling career and fitness, just having podiumed in the national XC 7 days before I did this? Nope, sorry, not a chance. I wouldn't have been able to live with myself knowing the fitness was there while just calling my season "done". If I had put the bike to rest in June I would have always wondered "if I could have" and that is not something I wanted to wonder.

If I hadn't had raced the rest of the season, for me personally it would have been a regret. Yep, I would have been THE ONE to sit back decades from now and wonder if during that 2007 season if I couldn't have pushed through the injury successfully. Well, the sentence "pushed through the injury successfully" probably doesn't ring true in a lot of cases and it really didn't for me. But most importantly I know that now and that totally satisfies me. No regrets.

But lord it hurt while doing it. I know cyclists are good at inflicting pain on themselves but throw in some nasty injury on top of that during a race and boy oh boy you have got some great misery ahead of you. IT WAS NOT FUN but I chose that path willingly.

That said, the ribs are doing better but they are still uncomfortable at night occasionally. What a godsend just being able to say that last sentence is! I am able to train and live my live normally for the most part, its just the night thing and that will get better with time.

So I got smart and have chosen to not attend some major CX races that are coming up this weekend in WA and the one in Vegas in the name of healing these things up for good by the end of October. Hard choice but a mandatory one. I like to think that I learn from these things you know?

And I do.


I am NOT saying push through your injuries by any stretch, but I am telling you where I am with this. Everyone is different physically and mentally and so are injuries. I mean you may break an arm but WHERE you broke it may change everything compared to the person next to who broke his or hers. Its all relative. As for mentally, we all need different things to put our head in a good spot and my choices have put me in a good spot which is somewhere I recognize I need to be.

Knowing ones self physically and emotionally is half the battle and thank heavens at this point I seem to have a grip on that.