Umm, mine to be precise 🙁

I took a bit of a nasty tumble the Friday before last (21st June).

Still not sure what happened but I was on Airstream 2 taking it fairly easy as I was on my own, and the next thing I knew I was on a heap on the floor staring at a pool of my own blood 😯

Two chaps cycled back down to the car park with me but I lost sight of you coming along the back of the visitor centre so didn’t get a chance to say thanks. So if you’re reading thanks for assisting and interrupting your ride.

My face was pretty badly cut up (the nurse mentioned you could see into my mouth via my septum), I fractured my nose, broke my elbow, had some nasty grazing to shoulder and knee and lost a tooth. I managed to avoid a trip to theatre and it could have been much worse so I’m counting myself lucky.

Its odd how I have no recollection of how I fell but I was recording the ride via mytracks. Is there a way I can check the gps data to see if I was knocked out for any period of time as I have no memory of the crash? I’ve got no software that can open those files except exporting to Strava but I don’t think that gives detail.

Ooof. Have you kept your new aperture? might be useful for ‘shot gunning’ cans of beer/Picking teeth from novel angles?

Don’t let it keep you off the bike fella

Strava will show a stopped period, but as its unlikely to be more than a minute or so at most I suspect you’ll struggle to differentiate between any unconscious time and time just spent sorting yourself out!

Garmin connect showed up the stationary time when dislocated my shoulder, although it was more funny to see my rather erratic track across the road as i realized sitting in a ditch after skidding on black ice was not the best place to be if a car should choose to follow my example.

I find the Garmin quite interesting to see how fast I was going when I crash. Always disappointingly slow!

Open up the gpx file in notepad – you may be able to see timings hidden in the mass of data. Look for date and time stamps.
Someone side swiped my front wheel in a circuit race at Castle Coombe a few years back, in the bunch sprint for the line. Went from 34.9mph to zero according to my Polar – sometimes best not to know!

Things like this do make me think i should start wearing something like an Urge Archi Enduro (or whatever its called) for trail riding rather than the adapted xc lids. Or even, dare i say it, a met parachute style helmet. Basically anything with a bit of face protection. Hope you heal up quickly.

More to the point, do you have video footage of your crash? Sounds like a beauty! 😉

Was this you?

No video footage as unfortunately on my own. It has made me think twice about cycling trails like Cwmcarn on my own in future though. Will be off the bike for a good month or so until the elbow heals but will do my best not to let it unnerve me getting back out there.

As good a job the helmet did I have a sneaky suspicion it was the visor that lacerated my top lip. I noticed it was hanging down on one side and is well covered in blood. Checking my gloves a few days later I noticed the palms were clean so I think the crash happened so fast I didn’t put my hands out…

Was this you?

Thankfully not – I’d build up a lot more speed before that drop. Or take the chicken run to the right 😳

try not to focus on the after math is the only advice id give and just move on and focus on getting back to how it was before. I had a bad crash end of April now, not the worst by any means, but I have no recollection of hitting the floor I just remember seeing the tree last second and thinking ‘oh god this is gonna really hurt’ and cant remember the majority of the 30 min 999 call and although at first I wondered and wondered what had happened and how I could fix it I just realised it wont make a blind bit of difference. Stuck now with 3 front teeth missing and scars on my face but back on the bike and back riding on my own regularly as I always did and although Im more aware of what can go wrong I still dont let it effect me and how I ride.

^Ooof, sounds nasty!

Yep, that is sound advice methinks. I had been contemplating a skills course for a while too so I might give some serious thought to booking one as a means to getting my confidence back up when I can ride again.

I don’t use a visor on my MTB helmet, mostly as I think they do FA but also read a few posts about visor into face injuries.

What were you going to see?

ell_tell hope you are healing well. Anyway you can go back up and spot/look for any paint/etc or recall? OF course not now- but when you are feeling a bit better. Get weell soon.

A TOTAL guess but your front wheel washed out and you hit something nose/septum etc on your forks/bike whilst on the way down?

I’ve had a nasty fall- broke upper arm clean through, ribs, shoulder and knocked myself silly. I was laughing, joking, walked a mile to wait for an ambulance then lost consciousness in the hospital an hour or so later.

It will knock you for a while, just get out and spin that bike, feel the breeze first. Then take it from there 🙂