cat-a-pult

Last Tuesday's training ride was eventful to say the least. It was low to mid-tempo recovery ride-- nothing out of the ordinary-- or so I thought. The first 25.4 miles went off without a hitch but as I approached home the cat-a-pult happened. I was riding on James Rd-- a main road I take nearly every training day to get where I'm going. With all the warm weather the grass in the ditch has really shot up and is quite tall. This was both a bad and good thing thing in this case. With less than 300m before I turned off of James and less than 1 mile from home an large orange tabby did its best crouching-tiger impression jumping right, I mean right in front of me. Before I knew it I was doing a 20+ MPH header into the ditch flipping over and landing on the crown of my head. All I really remember from the moment is the cracking sound that accompanied the impact. Standing to my feet I tried to orient myself which was particularly difficult as I was seeing multiple everything including at least 5 orange tabbies fleeing the scene. I attempted to flag down a passing vehicle but he apparently did not find it suspicious to see a beaten, grass-stained and disoriented cyclist wobbling in the ditch and just gave an obligatory "country-howdy" wave. Pulling my cell phone from my jersey I called Kat to pick my up. Fortunately the boys were already at Grandma and Grandpa's house so after dropping off my bike and changing my clothes Kat drove me to the ER where I was quickly fitted with a neck-brace and an MRI. All I could really think was my season was over. I was trying to be positive and happy that I was walking but, well. After about an hour wait my doc finally cleared me to take off the neck-brace and said something like, "interestingly, you did not break your neck but you did at some point in the past." Apparently, my C5 vertebra had been fractured years ago. I have no idea when that happened, I can think of many potential moments, but I was quite relieved there was no current fracture. After some insane prescription writing (including 2 narcotics, jeez) I was walking out the door much relieved. Forgoing the narcotics for ibuprofen, I actually slept fairly well Tuesday night. I took Wednesday off the bike but went for a 1 1/2 hour "eyes-on-the-ditch" ride on Thursday and got fully back on track yesterday with a smooth 2 hrs. Pondering the "why" of such an event of course really gets a person nowhere but I can say after revisiting the scene, I was very fortunate. I missed hitting a mailbox by less than 2 feet. Had that happened I would certainly have had more significant injuries. Oh, and BTW, for those of you that have your priorities in the, ahem, right place, the only bike damage was to my Powertap wheel which now needs a rebuild.
Blessings, ~Cole