Now You've Done It!

Pain

Your body is injured. A signal is sent to the brain that says "now you've done it", and a throbbing, hot feeling starts to explode in the area of injury. Ah well, chalk this one up to Mark doing something stupid. At staff training for PEAC, we were practicing some bike skills using PEAC's Trek 800 mountain bikes. I'm not in road shoes, bike shorts, or any of the standard stuff I'd wear on my Cannondale, save the helmet. The drill was the "emergency" or "quick" stop drill from the LAB Road I course where you ride for a bit, then try to stop on a dime by shifting your weight as far to the rear of the bike as possible while firmly squeezing both brakes (this drill is typically not a dangerous drill).

After 5 or 6 successful runs across the Heritage School parking lot in Saline, John the director decides to make it a race. First one to stop on the line on the far side of the parking lot wins. He won the first race mainly by pushing off on 2 while he was saying "1, 2, 3, go!". On the return run, I pushed off slightly off balance. No big deal. I took a big turn of the crank with my right leg, then shifted my weight to the left pedal. The problem was, I sort of missed the pedal, only managing to get my left big toe over the center of the pedal.

This, evidently, isn't enough to hold my entire 185 pound body on the bike. The shoe and my big toe gave way, bending upwards as the rest of my body slipped back to earth. The left pedal spun like a high-powered fan as my foot rolled off. I stuck the landing, and even pushed off again to resume on my right foot, but the hot pain quickly entered my foot and my attention turned from racing to damage assessment. St. Joseph-Mercy Hospital in Saline helped with the damage assessment, and eventually reported a hyper-extended toe. A radiologist later called to report that the toe was indeed fractured.

The throbbing toe hurt a bit, but not quite as much as my ego. The hot-shot biker guy that runs a big bike club is the one on crutches watching everyone else ride on Tuesday. Oh, well, I still thank my lucky stars that my bicycle mishaps have been relatively minor since my leg-in-the-spokes trick 34 years ago.