Post pics of your injuries

[Harry Meatmotor]

I’m gonna be one to say that some of the best looking bikes are those that are considerately (not, considerably) mis-matched. so that’s a vote for leave the fenders as is. also, it’s more about the stable of steeds representing an over arching ideology about bicycle good looks than it is about one single bike being the perfect culmination of cycling good taste. leave the single incarnation stuff to the NAHBS guys, i say.

[hozn]

Yeah, painting those polished VO fenders would truly be a crime. And HM is right; the mismatches are the real style statements. But you /are/ talking about a thin-tubed steel frame here; short of swapping in a carbon fork and deep carbon wheels I think the bike is gonna inherently lean classic.

[Vicegrip]

@dkel 88332 wrote:

Thanks, Dave. I already feel much better today (i.e. I have stopped wincing every time I move). And I went ahead and mounted the road tires this morning, making me late for work.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]5945[/ATTACH]
On an unrelated topic, I had been leaning towards leaving the fenders silver, but now that I have smooth touring tires on instead of knobby CX tires, and now that they are sporting a silver reflective sidewall, I’m starting to think the bike is getting too “classic” looking. I also have a brass bell on order, which may make things even MORE “classic.” I think those fenders are going to have to go black.

IMO stay classic. Adds a full .5 multiplier to any cat-6 race pass on your local MUP.

[PotomacCyclist]

How did people turn the thread about gross injury photos into a thread about bikes and bike photos? I am outraged!

[DismalScientist]

Classic bikes don’t have brifters.:p

[dkel]

Man, I didn’t get those fenders to be classy; I got them because they’re the right size and length! Aside from classic v. other-than-classic, that chrome look is detracting from the purple glitter. Look. *That’s* all about the purple!

I know this thread has been totally derailed, but FWIW, it was my injury that got it off track. :p

[DismalScientist]

@dkel 88357 wrote:

Look. *That’s* all about the purple!

That is certainly about something, but I’m not sure it’s purple. :rolleyes:

[bobco85]

Well, this just happened today:

broken left crank
[ATTACH=CONFIG]5947[/ATTACH]

scratched right foot
[ATTACH=CONFIG]5948[/ATTACH]

While riding to Trader Joe’s in Clarendon on Highland just a few blocks south of my destination, I was in a standing position to pedal off from a stop sign (I was a PAL) when the left crank on my hybrid suddenly broke. I luckily did not fall down, but I did scratch the back of my right foot. A cyclist coming toward me witnessed it and asked if I was okay. I replied that I was fine but tried to hide my disappointment at knowing that I’d have to get the crank (and hopefully JUST the crank) replaced. At this point, my bike (GT Zum City bike) is a year and a half old with about 3,460 miles on it.

I did, however, continue on my grocery trip, getting a bandage from Trader Joe’s (it was blue!), and using the downhills to coast with walking for the uphills to make it home. I got into a good rhythm of half-pedaling by using my left foot to push the broken half of the crank back, almost like rowing a boat, to stay above walking speed, but really, it was rather pathetic.

Anybody know what kind of $$$ will be emptied from my wallet to fix/replace this with average parts?

[hozn]

@bobco85 88371 wrote:

Anybody know what kind of $$$ will be emptied from my wallet to fix/replace this with average parts?

What kind of crank set is it? You might b able to find just the left crank arm on eBay, though if that broke under me I would replace it with something less junky. . I have heard of crankarms breaking, but after less than 4000 miles is crazy.

[PotomacCyclist]

Most of my bike injuries have been minor: scrapes on the calf from the chain ring when I was learning how to clip/unclip from clipless pedals, jamming my knee into a sidewalk when I tried to bunnyhop a curb, scraping a knee both times I’ve done the Diamond Derby/Phoenix Derby after I got tired and became careless or too fatigued to unclip properly during the messenger challenge.

The one real crash was in the first month after I got my first bike as an adult, in 2009. I rode on the Capital Crescent Trail a little too fast on a long straightaway. It was a downhill section and I could see that there was no traffic of any kind for a hundred yards or so. No people nearby who might walk into the path either. And being a newbie, I thought it would be fun to pick up some speed on the modest downhill. I hit a series of bumps in the asphalt. I started bouncing off of them and losing contact with the surface. Then I started bouncing off to the right, where there was a heavily wooded ditch. I thought I’d be in trouble if I tumbled down there so I cranked onto the brakes way too hard. I flipped over the bike. Next thing I knew, I was sitting there stunned. Somehow I landed on the grass, not the pavement. That was fortunate. My head did not contact the ground at all, because the helmet didn’t have a speck of dirt on it.

The back of my shirt was covered in dirt, where I landed on the back of the shoulder blade. It hurt a lot but nothing was broken. I had also smacked my cheek into the ground and I had a cut on my eyebrow. Even with those multiple hits, my helmet didn’t touch the ground. I don’t know how that happened. My shoulder or lat was sore for about a month. I had a big bruise on my cheek for a couple weeks, but nothing else. No broken bones. Some timidity about riding again, although I managed to get over my fear and get back onto a bike again 3 or 4 days later. (I learned my lesson. That is to never ride too fast on bike trails again. If I really want to pick up speed, I need to do it on a smooth, wide, paved road, one that I’m familiar with so I know about any possible potholes, grates or obstructions.)

No photos. I didn’t log onto the forum until the following year.

I do have a few running injury photos. I know overuse injuries are more common among runners. I had a lot in my first 12-18 months, but nothing since I figured everything out (smarter training, supplementary functional strength training/core work, improved nutrition). But I’ve had a couple acute running injuries. I tripped on someone’s foot during a marathon and landed on a pinkie finger. I can type, do strength exercises, do pull-ups and swim with that hand, but the finger still feels awkward. After longer swims, I have to tug outward on the finger to ease up the pressure on the joint.

In another incident, I made the mistake of walking to a fitness center in winter (not in the D.C. area) through the snow and not bringing a second pair of running shoes. I ran in the same shoes on the treadmill. Then I decided to do strides, or short sprints. Bad move on a treadmill in general, and a really bad move while wearing slightly wet shoes. I slipped as I tried to jump up onto the sides after the first stride. I fell and rolled back along the belt. I grabbed out instinctively to hold onto the handrail. Dumb move. If I had just let myself fly out the back, I would have tumbled but nothing would have happened. When I held on, my knee stayed in place as the belt grinded into the skin. Then I let go and tumbled off the back anyway.

This was a year and a half ago. I couldn’t swim or run for a month until the skin healed, on both knees. There’s barely a scar on one knee now, but on the other knee, I still have a large scar, about 1.5″ wide. It sort of looks like an outline of the continental United States.

I’ll post a picture of the fresh wound later on. It’s plenty gross enough for this thread. Just to get the thread back onto the topic of gross and disgusting injuries. And photos that will make people’s stomachs churn.

[dkel]

@PotomacCyclist 88379 wrote:

When I held on, my knee stayed in place as the belt grinded into the skin. Then I let go and tumbled off the back anyway.

This was a year and a half ago. I couldn’t swim or run for a month until the skin healed, on both knees. There’s barely a scar on one knee now, but on the other knee, I still have a large scar, about 1.5″ wide. It sort of looks like the outline of the continental United States.

I lost *a lot* of layers of skin off my elbow in my slide on Thursday. If I don’t keep up the pain killers, I’m a cranky mess to be around. It still looks repulsive, and I’m wondering how long it will take to heal. Fortunately, I can ride without discomfort, and have done 40 miles since the crash. I don’t have a day off of riding planned in the near future, so I guess I haven’t lost my confidence. The different tires I put on help, of course.

[bobco85]

@hozn 88376 wrote:

What kind of crank set is it? You might b able to find just the left crank arm on eBay, though if that broke under me I would replace it with something less junky. . I have heard of crankarms breaking, but after less than 4000 miles is crazy.

Good news on the broken crank: I took it in and got the crank replaced for only $10 (price of the part, they did the labor for free) with a stronger crank. The people at the bike shop were more impressed with the fact that I could even break such a component!

I also got an explanation of the break. The crank is aluminum, but if you look at the colors at the break, you’ll see:
– black part – possible crack had occurred here that had let water in over time and weakened
– white part – this broke off when the crank snapped and thus was still fresh
– silver part at the black/white border (very thin, hard to see) – when the crank broke, the material here got stretched a bit

On my injury, there’s a chunk missing from the back of my right foot, but a bandage seems to be doing the trick for now. Apparently, the last time something like this happened (the guy from the bike shop told me this), the person cut their leg open on the broken part and blood sprayed everywhere. I’m very glad I did not suffer the same fate!

[hozn]

@bobco85 88407 wrote:

– black part – possible crack had occurred here that had let water in over time and weakened

Wait, is this the bike you took into the ocean?

$10 seems cheap for a quality crankset (I was expecting more like $100), but hopefully it is just a good deal and will last you a long time!

[bobco85]

@hozn 88408 wrote:

Wait, is this the bike you took into the ocean?

$10 seems cheap for a quality crankset (I was expecting more like $100), but hopefully it is just a good deal and will last you a long time!

It is the one I took into the ocean (but I did wash it after returning from the beach, I swear!).

They replaced the left crank only, and as far as I was told, the other one is not expected to suffer the same fate. At least for now, I have that good feeling that my bike is working again (when one of my bikes is out of commission, it’s painful for me)

[PotomacCyclist]

@dbb 70562 wrote:

While I’m cool about blood and guts, this tread seems a bit counter to the general theme of the forum, which is to encourage cycling. I’d hope we would find a better venue to share our photos (maybe the happy hours?) so as not to suggest to the visitors here that cycling is so dangerous that even skilled cyclists bleed a lot. As a sales pitch, that one might be improved.

Just say’n

I already pointed out that I’ve had more injuries from running, and that was mostly in my first year or so. Same with cycling.

I’ll also add to the thread that my worst injury all time occurred when I used to be fairly sedentary. It happened because I was so weak muscularly and then I got back to piano playing, this time for a community theater show. The weak lats plus the pounding on the piano during weeks of rehearsals led to a severe muscle imbalance between the lats and the trapezius muscles. (Many people have a lesser version of this imbalance, from sitting at desks in front of computers for hours a day, while they never use their lat muscles. Unless people are training or participating in particular sports, most people rarely use their lat muscles in modern life. Rowing motions and pull-up movements engage the lats.)

That severe imbalance caused the traps to be so tight that it was a mess waiting to happen. And it did. I had already felt sore for weeks in the upper back/traps. Then one day, while I was eating dinner, I finished and stood up. Just that simple movement was enough, given how messed up the lat/trap balance was. The trap partially tore and the entire (large) muscle went into powerful spasms. Most painful experience of my life. I couldn’t move an inch because each movement set off new waves of muscle spasms in the trap. These were not garden-variety spasms. They were so intense that I almost passed out from the pain. Because I couldn’t move, I couldn’t sit down either. So I just stood there, for an entire hour. Unable to sit, unable to walk over to a chair or bed, or anything.

Eventually, I realized that I had to do something. I couldn’t stand there all day and all night. So I slowly walked down a flight of stairs. Because quick movements set off more muscle spasms, I think it took me an hour or even two hours to go down one flight of stairs! The intense pain subsided by the next day, but I had to deal with problems from the partial tear for quite a while, especially since I was so muscularly weak at the time. That’s what led me to start with strength training, eventually. I had rehab exercises but I quickly realized that they were designed for 80-year-olds with no muscle tone at all. I was a fairly young adult with no major health problems until that muscle tear, so I thought it was ridiculous for me to be so weak.

I did strength training on and off for a few years. I still had almost zero aerobic endurance. (A few years after that point, I remember doing a set of squats. The squats taxed my aerobic system so much that I was out of breath for about 10 minutes!) When I started swimming in 2004 (only casual laps of breaststroke, and only during the summers), my first lap got me so tired that it took me 5 or 10 minutes to recover. But I did build up a basic level of endurance by the end of that summer, so that I could do easy 30-min. swim workouts without feeling like I was dying.

***
Another item: I’ve met people at work who have been injured from non-athletic activities, primarily because they were inactive. One person tore her knee ligaments at a wedding reception. One of her cousins ran up to her and jumped up on her shoulders, causing her knee to buckle. Another guy ripped his rotator cuff muscles, while riding Metro. No fight or any criminal incident. I think his shoulders and surrounding musculature were so weak that a sudden start or stop of the train might have caused the injury.

Just adding this so that future readers don’t think cycling is necessarily so dangerous. It’s not. Nothing in life is risk-free. That includes attending weddings, driving, riding Metro, walking on streets or sitting on the couch stuffing one’s face with candy, fries and soda. Actually, it’s the couch sitting and junk food that ends up killing the most people each year, at least in the U.S. Not right away, but eventually that lifestyle grinds you down, at an early age, and the time up to that death is usually full of health problems.

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