On Saturday I was riding with a collection of other cyclists to Llandudno from Manchester. A nice 100 miler was promised, and despite a bit of a headwind and a few spots of rain early on we’d covered about 35 miles. We had stopped at Marbury Park for a coffee and regrouped after a couple of faffage moments and I rode at the back with a group that needed a navigator ( not many had working garmins, but those of us that did were kinda spread out between the riders)
Having got the group up some complicated bits I left the rear group and decided to catch up with my mates in the next group up, I remember being way marked by the ride organizer onto a narrow, traffic free lane at Norley, and next thing I remember is being picked up off the Tarmac several hundred yards down the lane. It was obvious my collar bone was busted, my helmet smashed, my head bleeding, but absolutely nothing to show why I had come off. I have absolutely no memory of the incident, and the guys that picked me up tell me I was out cold.

Anyway, let’s hear it for the good old NHS. That was Saturday at 1.30 pm, and by Teatime on Sunday I was being discharged from the Countess Cheshire hospital having been plated up by an upper limb expert.

Will I ever remember what happened? The bike has a damaged left shifter and right seat stay, and all my injuries…hip, shoulder and head, are on the right, so it looks like I high-sided on a perfectly straight piece of road.

Any signs that you tried to save your fall? Bruised/grazed hands?

No rear wheel damage? Any pics of the bike? Any junctions near where you fell?

**** dude. Heal well. You promised me a local ride and I’ll hold you to a summer one of this.

Nasty.Get well soon.
Missing manhole cover?

You may never remember. I lost several hours either side of a crash a few years ago and it never came back. Is it too early to start the argument over whether your helmet saved your life or caused your unconsciousness by rotational force 🙂

Get well soon, summer’s coming 😀

There’s a slight lip, a few cm of raised road surface twenty yards before where I was found, but nothing that would have normally caused any issues. No marks on my gloves, first thing I checked. It’s as if I had blacked out before the crash. Really bizarre. I had had a good breakfast, croissant at Picaddilly, cake and latte at Marbury so it wasn’t a fuel problem.

You may never remember. I lost several hours either side of a crash a few years ago and it never came back.

Yep. My dad lost a few hours when he hit his head.

Get your bloods/blood sugar checked?

The impact down my right side is linear. My shoulder has hit the deck, separating the collar bone from the sternum, then breaking into three next to the AC joint, my hip has a bruise/ contusion the size of Halifax from crest of hip to groin, and the side of my face has an abraded patch where the strap adjuster has driven, together withe the arm of my glasses, into the top of my cheek. The helmet has cracked just above my ear. At a guess I’ve hit hip, then shoulder, then side of head in that order. I quite like helmets.

I’d had a dose of gastroenteritis the weekend before, but that was cleared up by Tuesday. I was back to eating properly and was well hydrated.

Slight change in the road? If you are moving hands between tops/hoods/drops right at the moment the bike shimmys you can miss the bar and your body will keep going forward depositing you on the road. It happened on the TDF a couple of years back. Check your chain too, a locked up drivetrain can throw you but that’s more likely to result in an OTB

Looks like a very sudden crash which meant you didn’t have time to reach your arms out before you hit the floor.
Maybe a little slick area of Tarmac just as you put the power down? Front wheel just goes from under you and milliseconds later you’re on the floor.
Could have been much worse – Glad you’re ok!

Drivetrain is fine, left shifter has a piece of grass in the opening part, and is twisted towards the stem perhaps an eight of a rotation. Stem shifted on steerer a few degrees, dirt on right hand tape on the drop section, and paint chips off seat stay on drive side halfway up. Pedals aren’t scuffed either side, si may even have still been clipped in when I landed. The guy that found me said the bike was more or less on top of me. Not a mark on the rear mech.

That all sounds very strange. You had the collar bone plated you say? At least that won’t be holding your recovery up. It’s normally ~6 weeks for one in a triangular bandage but plated, you can ride as soon as the rest of you is ready.

Weird off, sounds a bit like; with a jump to the right, let’s do the time warp again. 😀

Sounds like you’ve passed out or alien abduction, one of those for sure.

Drac has it and JHJ will confirm a little later on but it’s aliens. Any pain while sitting down?

The emergency room thought it would just be a bandage, but the consultant found the separate shard of bone and advised plating. Given the difference in recovery times I didn’t take much persuading. I still feel very secondhand. The hip I landed on has no cartilage thanks to a cam impingement anyway, so I can’t walk much yet, but it’s only a matter of time.

I wondered when it was time to explore what really happened 😆 😀

Quite common with a bit of a head knock, losing memory like that. A mate of mine had a really bad off a couple of years back, his steerer tube snapped on his road bike, nasty facial injuries and lost lots of teeth.

Where he came off was about an hours ride from his flat in Glasgow, yet he still to this day doesn’t even remember leaving home.

Trek not only gave him a new bike, but also paid for his dental work and even his flights back from prague as he was on a secondment from work over there. Now that’s a warranty.

I wonder if Planet X will try and compete with trek, seeing as I bought one of their frames off gumtree…. It was unused after all.

A swift check confirms no evidence of recent traffic in the old ring piece department, either way, thanks to morphine and codeine….

OP sounds like a classic mysterious “comdey” fall, its funny if you get up and not funny if you are injured. Get well soon.

Concrete turds are a well known side effect of Codeine and Morphine. You’ll be wanting to borrow Bobby Brown’s spoon. 😀

Pissed any baby robins off recently? They can be pretty feisty.

Any family history of epilepsy ?

Had a similar thing a few years ago – mine was on a cycle lane segregated from road by Armco barrier, no injuries, no bike damage just spotted lying KO’d by passing driver – last memory leaving work, then woke up coming out of some kind of scanner and being asked if I knew who/where I was!
Happily the ambulance driver bought my bike as well as me to the hospital, so after being given the “all clear” just rode home, memory never came back, still a mystery…..

Stick jam the front wheel? Sounds like you went otb and onto your head. When i collided with the side of a car i lost very little memory – about 15 minutes from the collision. Otherwise in increasing severity, low blood sugar and seizure. Neither of those are likely to sent you otb, but the front wheel will wash out first as you lose conciousness. You are also more likely to graze your face than a otb, which tends to hit forehead and above.

Heal fast, plating was the right option, but watch for a separated ac joint. I have one of those at the moment.

Stick jam the front wheel?

had this the other week – tho I was, surprise surprise, riding through some woods not out for a road ride, freaked me out a little tho, keep worrying about it happening again.

I got amnesia at school, some dickhead tapped me on the shoulder I turned around oblivious and received a good solid uppercut to the jaw, “woke up*” in hospital with the entire day missing. Tho I didn’t know it at the time it was like waking up after a really drunken night, over the next few days pieces started coming back, remember a few highlights from the day, the punch, remember feeling pretty messed up afterwards, don’t remember being taken to hospital. See what happens, it may come back it may not, heal quick, give the bike a proper going over make sure nothing mechanical happened and if it checks out try not to let it bother you.
Easier said than done tho.

*hadn’t been knocked out, afaik I was conscious throughout just not really with it

Antelope?

My neighbour (a PC) had a similarly mystifying crash. He went out alone and woke up in hospital, having been found unconscious by a driver on a quiet lane. He appeared to have gone OTB but there was absolutely no sign at all of a reason and no damage to the bike.

His GPS showed that he was cruising along a flat section of road and stopped abruptly, didn’t move for a few minutes then got up and wandered with his bike in a random way around the road then stopped again for a few minutes before he was found.

Later after he had recovered from the compressed vertebrae and the head injury he had a few sessions with a specialist and they worked out that the most likely reason for the crash was that he actually passed out, as he had “form” having passed out a couple of years before while tired and hungry as he was arresting somebody – the prisoner was apparently quite concerned and didn’t try to escape!

I had very similar to the OP with similar outcomes (broken collarbone) on July 7th on 2 consecutive years, within 50 yards of each other.

The second time I didnt pass out so worked out what it was. The first time I don’t even remember leaving the pub!

come on fess up…you were doing no handy, arms spread wide singing “I believe I can fly” at the top of your voice and you binned it into the tarmac. There is no shame* in that, you can admit it to us.

*actually there is a lot of shame in that. you need to have a word with yourself.

I had a crash a few years ago and I have no recollection of it at all. I was on a flat trail going slowly waiting for my sister apparently. First I knew about it was when I woke up on an operating table with a surgeon standing over sewing my top lip back together. Very scary the fact I cant remember a thing about it or about 3 days before it. The doctors said its normal and the brains way of protecting me from the trauma. They said I may remember what happened over time but still to this day I have no idea.
All I can guess is that I turned to look where my sister was and lost it.
I think I must of cut my lip open on my exposure light as the scar matches perfectly.

I once switched hand position from flats to hoods and completely missed on one side. Fell but it was at the top of a hill so not at speed. Perfectly possible to fall with no obvious cause though! Maybe you stood up to push it a bit and the wheel slipped a bit in the wet.

come on fess up…you were doing no handy, arms spread wide singing “I believe I can fly”

I was riding back to work on my PlanetX Pro carbon sat up arms on my lap pedalling briefly when a small gust of wind washed the front out- I caught the front at about 45degrees and saved it. Hated those slab-sided forks. On my Ritchey never ever had an issue.

disc brake and front QR?…

Doesn’t take much, I high sided off my road bike, when I was sat up taking a drink. Very fortunate to land on verge, no major damage done. Went back to check a few days later and all I could see was there was a patch in the road about 20 yards back from where I landed and the shiny tar they seal the gaps with was in a wee ridge, maybe 5mm proud of the road but I’d have hit it at an acute angle and I reckon my wheel skliffed off that, I got flicked forward and over be top.

Heal well anyway.

Just checked the bike over properly. No damage apart from where my heel appears to have crushed the seatstay. No defensive glove scuffs, bars nudged a bit round the steerer, shifter a bit twisted, but no ripped bar tape, no obvious scrape damage. I think I need to get the doc to check me over, there’s a chance I blacked out before I went down.

I had a motorbike crash where I genuinely have no recollection of how I got off the road- I just found myself riding along a massive drainage ditch 😆 Apparently I almost got knocked off by a car but I’ve no memory of that at all.

Hit a animal or something like that?