Robert Winder

Two weeks Mex was training in Danville and in the rush to continue her motherly duties she took a corner too quickly, and in the wet, she came down.

She saw the Dr last week and has a suspect broken “Hook of the Hamate” - a golfers injury that requires surgery to fix.

Damn… damn… damn…

She’s a worse patient than me, very frustrated and upset that a silly accident causes so much pain that she can’t ride on the road or race - she feels that her season is passing her by.

Down… down… down…

Its been a while since any meaningful content - some might say there’s never meaningful content.

Anyway, I just saw the specialist - Dr Jensen in Orinda if you ever need a shoulder guy - its been 2 weeks since he operated on me, putting in a 4inch rod into the clavicle.  I’ve to go back in 3 weeks with x-rays and all being well I’ll be able to get back on the road after that.  Fingers crossed some more.

I’m back on the trainer since Thursday and have started ramping up the sessions to include a few intervals - no matter how boring they are.  Not sure if you can really replace the road sessions with the trainer since I’ve been lucky enough to never have needed to in the past. 

There is a warm sultry breeze at the start of the W4 race. Mex did her pushy mother act and got Ruth in the W4 instead of racing with the fast junior boys.

No racing for Mex since she crashed on Tuesday and hurt her left hand. What a pair of cripples we are.

I persuaded Mex to set my bike up on the trainer yesterday. It took several promises of me being good, not overdoing it and committing to taking it easy. She reluctantly agreed and I waited for her to leave on her ride before I got on.

No surprises, but I hate the trainer, I’m the one riding in the rain and dark instead of getting on the trainer, in fact if it was a choice of trainer or going for a run then I’d rather run. I chose to watch the unbiased BBC coverage of track Worlds.

Anyway, I managed 15 minutes warm up before all hell broke loose and I decided that a short ME interval would be good - 5 minutes - no problem, the time flew by and my legs were feeling great. It must’ve been the TV because after a few minutes I decided to do another interval.

This one wasn’t so much fun and after about 4 minutes I was starting to feel light headed - just 1 more minute and I promised myself a rest. As usual it was the longest minute ever, much longer than any other minute. I finished and started having that dizzy feeling reserved for the end of a TT. Oops, I grabbed the towel, urgh, that doesn’t feel good, just hold it down, come on. That was a close one, maybe I wouldn’t be able to beat Chris Hoy after all.

It must be the medication, either that or the week of trying to recover, whatever, I’ll be back later for some more. I’ve got Hoy in my sights.

Dave Moulton has passed on an instructional video for cyclists and motorists…

One of the recurring thoughts from Saturday is how my head banged the road during the crash.  I remember all too vividly the thump of my helmet as it hit hard.  Thank god I was wearing a good, protective helmet.  My old 5 bar leather toe strap helmet wouldn’t have helped me much.

My helmet is cracked in 5 places, its probably worse than it looks.  But there are obvious dents and scrapes on the outside as well as the inside.

Ironically, we bought Ruth a new lid last Friday and being a good kid she challenged why we needed to spend so much money on it…  They say a picture is worth a thousand words: