Outside

River's high

Last Saturday was my first day outside, on the bike, since April 2. I knew from past experience that it would be a little uncomfortable, but by then I felt the expected level of discomfort would probably be no higher than that of another hour on the indoor trainer. The typical time everyone always gives for bones to more or less heal is six weeks. Saturday was three weeks and two days, so some compromises and adaptations were definitely in order. Top priority was to not fall down, of course, but not doing more harm than good was right up there too. Fortunately, I had the 'Cross bike, currently shod with 36 mm gravel tires, and set up for a much more upright position than the Bianchi, to fall back on. The bike currently has a Redshift "shockstop" suspension stem on it, since I'd been thinking of doing a little gravel riding if I could ever find anything nearby that was worth it. So I put about 40 psi in the tires, and stepped out the door around 6:30 am, aka sunrise, on Saturday. Under the circumstances, riding in the dark is just needlessly throwing another unknown variable into the equation, especially since I would be riding alone and didn't have to worry about meeting a group or anything like that.

Not knowing which of the local streets may have been torn up or re-paved over the past few weeks, and not knowing how my shoulder was going to respond to every little bump in the road, I decided to play it safe and take Neron to Short to St. Charles to Burdette so I could cross the railroad tracks at the Corps of Engineers entrance and avoid the unknown condition of Willow and/or Oak Streets. I probably averaged 10 mph at best. The shoulder still aches when my right arm is on the bars, and even more when I lift it off the bars, and as expected I could feel every little bump in the road despite the relatively cushy tires and upright position. Still, it wasn't really much worse than being on the indoor trainer in that regard. The weather was practically perfect, which seems to be the status quo since I was injured, of course, so I ended up riding all the way out to the upriver end of Jefferson, where the levee bike path is still closed. The river is just below flood stage this week, and they've opened a little bit of the Spillway already, but it looks like the level will drop next week. On the plus side, the flooded batture attracts a lot of wildlife. On my two rides up there, Saturday and Monday, I have seen two or three eagles, a rather big alligator, a snake swimming in water, at least three types of herons, some killdeer, and occasionally some humans.

These rides are not steady, or fast, and any actual training benefit is minimal. It's more about getting comfortable on the bike and moving my legs at this point. Interestingly, riding with my hands on the drops does not seem to hurt any more than in other positions, although I spend most of my time with my hands on the tops and probably 70% of my weight on my left hand. Every couple of miles I move my right hand to the top of my thigh, which immediately relieves the otherwise ever-present dull ache. As a result, I see my speed and heart rate kind of all over the place as I shift hand positions and, occasionally, sit up entirely with both hands off the bars. Anyway, I guess it was a successful experiment in that it confirmed that I could handle being on the bike for an hour and a half without too much of a problem.

Sunday's weather was also nearly perfect, so I decided to make my way to Starbucks for the start of the Sunday Giro. I planned to ride with the group, carefully, on the Lakeshore Drive warmup segment, and then turn back at the Armory loop. That worked out nicely, so I put in a few extra easy miles on Lakeshore Drive before heading back home. It was still early on a Sunday morning on my way back, so I didn't have much traffic to deal with.

This morning I did another easy levee ride, which felt pretty much the same as the last one. Progress at this point is really slow and hardly noticeable on a day-to-day basis. What I am noticing is the return of my more usual aches and pains in my back and neck, probably made a little worse for lack of use. My right elbow occasionally hurts, but hopefully I won't end up with epicondylitis from lack of use like I did with one of my collarbone breaks. Also, the 'Cross bike just seems so slow and heavy compared to my regular road bike. The mountain bike shoes don't help in that regard, either. So I guess I will continue with this routine for the week and see how things are feeling on Friday. 

This is always such a balancing act.

Three Week Scapula Report

Definitely healing.

Today was X-ray day for me at TISM. After spending another hot and drippy hour on the trainer down in the basement, I cleaned up and walked over to TISM for my follow-up appointment. Progress seems like it has been slow, but then again, it always seems to feel that way in the third week after a broken bone. I can now, somewhat painfully and slowly, lift my right arm above my head, and it has been getting a little bit easier to  do things like sleep and pull on t-shirts. 

After four or five x-rays, I waited in the exam room for Dr. O'Brien to arrive, feeling fairly confident that there would not be any surprises. When he asked how I was feeling, I commented that I had developed a whole new appreciation for the number of muscles and ligaments that attach to the scapula. He smiled and replied, 16! He said that the scapula was healing very well, pointing out the differences between my ER x-rays and the new ones. You can see the healed collarbone from that crash at Six Gap some years back quite easily. My range of motion is good enough that PT shouldn't be necessary. The official radiology report noted the following, which I guess isn't too bad. The osteoarthritis is no surprise, considering my age and family history. The increase from 2 ribs to 4 was a little bit of a surprise, but does kind of explain the difficulty with lying down in bed. 

1. Healing comminuted fracture of the superior medial aspect of the right scapula.
2. Increased conspicuity minimally displaced lateral 2nd through 5th right rib fractures.
3. Moderate acromioclavicular and glenohumeral osteoarthrosis.
4. Corticated mineral density projects adjacent to the superior glenoid, likely loose body from scapular fracture.

As usual, he advised that things won't be really healed up until 6-8 weeks, and that of course everything won't be fully solid for a month or two after that, but in the meantime, I'm OK to get back on the road to the extent I can tolerate it, provided I don't do anything stupid, like crash. So no more follow-ups, just a gradual return to normal activity. In celebration, I pumped up the tires on the 'cross bike, which immediately reminded me that my right shoulder is still not ready for prime time. I think I may venture out for an easy ride on the levee this weekend.

Back around Christmas, the daughter had sent us a dog DNA test kit from Basepaws. It wasn't until a few weeks ago that I finally got around to swabbing Charley's gums and sending it off for analysis. That took quite a while, but a couple of days ago I got the results. Somewhat surprisingly, he matched up a little more with Labradors than "Staffordshire" Terriers, but it did confirm our suspicion that he was mainly a Lab / Pit Bull mix. Of course you can argue about the differences between "American Pit Bull Terrier" and "Staffordshire Terrier," but it seems that they largely the same, and the name depends more on whether you are in the U.S. or England. Interesting, though, and he didn't show any worrisome health traits, so that was good.

Reluctant Riding

Not exactly scenic

Well, it'll be three weeks next Wednesday since my unfortunate accident, and my perception of progress seems to have reached a bit of a plateau. For the most part, the ribs and scapula and whatever else was damaged don't bother me much as long as I'm vertical, and don't have to lift my right hand above the shoulder. Unfortunately that includes things like brushing teeth, shaving, and pulling on T-shirts. None of that is unexpected, of course. Lying horizontally in the bed is still pretty unconfortable, especially since I hate sleeping on my back.

So last Monday I decided it was time to climb onto the old Orbea, mounted on the even older wind trainer, and at least move my legs. It does still hurt with my hands on the bars, even with most of the weight on the left hand, but it's not intolerable. Every now and then I'll sit up to give it a little rest. Anyway, I at least managed to ride a little bit each day this week, accumulating a weekly total of 98 miles, keeping in mind that mileage on a trainer doesn't really mean much, intensity is low, and sweat volume is high. I've mostly been watching whatever cycling videos I find on YouTube to minimize the boredom. It doesn't seem like it would be worth setting up Zwift or Rouvy, since I'm not really inclined to put much intensity into my rides at this point.

Yesterday I got the Bianchi more or less back in shape. It suffered surprisingly little damage. The bottom of the right handlebar near the end was pretty well ground down by the long slide on the asphalt, and the brake hood on that side was torn, but other than a little scrape on the saddle, I can't find much else. So I re-taped the bars and ordered new brake hoods, and we'll just have to see if everything holds together when I finally get out on the road again, hopefully in about a week. I already have a replacement for the helmet, and a little superglue stuck down the edges of the ripped parts of the right shoe nicely. Fortunately, I had been wearing an old kit, so tossing it in the trash wasn't at all painful.

I have a followup appointment next week, so we'll see how those x-rays look and take it from there, I guess. I should be in a pretty deep hole by then, and it'll probably take a good month to climb out of it. The might be a little PT in my future too.

No Pretty Pictures

It's was one week since my Rapid Unscheduled Dismount (RUD) yesterday. Clincidentally, it has also been one week since I had a good night's sleep. There has been some improvement, of course, but as usual the day-to-day changes are barely preceptible. It will be a while before I can lift anything with my right arm, but at least I can now get it high enough to type, and almost high enough to feed myself. Sleeping, or just lying down, has really been the worst, though. The best I can do is to lie on my back with one or two pillows under my head. I doubt I've been asleep for more than a couple of hours. I'll see if I can get on the bike, inside of course, next week after we're done with the Tour de La. 

Yesterday I walked over to the Tulane Sports Medicine clinic to see Dr. O'Brien. He gave me a photocopy of a few of the x-rays from the ER, and checked range of motion to see if there was any obvious joint damage (there wasn't), and generally assured me that it should all heal up at the usual rate. He was OK with me getting on the trainer as soon as I could tolerate it, but of course advised to stay off the road for 6-8 weeks. He knows I won't wait that long, of course. I have a followup appointment in two weeks so they can do some x-rays to make sure things are moving in the right direction. 

This weekend is the Tour de La, and as usual pre-registrations are low. The weather this weekend should be great, so at least nobody can use that as an excuse. I should have some help loading up the car tomorrow, and then I'll go check out the road course and re-mark the turns and TT (hope I can find last year's marks!). I won't be able to do much of anything as far as course setup goes this year. Hopefully there will be enough help on race day to get the essentials done, though.

Out for the Count - Once Again

Mellow Monday

I had been starting to feel like I might be getting in shape. Temperatures had been much more to my liking, and turnout for the early morning rides had been rising. The Tour de La was rapidly approaching, and we'd been working on nailing down some of the logistics.

Last weekend, the Saturday Giro had been rained out, but by 7:30 am the weather was past us and the roads were starting to dry up, so I went for a levee ride on the old Orbea. Why the Orbea?  When you ride on the levee bike path when it's wet, there's always a 50% chance of a flat. It's something from the aggregate they used for the asphalt. So I wasn't too surprised when I flatted a bit past Williams Blvd. I had been considering extending the ride out to the Spillway, but the flat pretty much killed that idea, so I fixed the flat and turned back at the fence at the parish line where the levee work begins.

The weather for the Sunday Giro was much better, and although we had a good turnout, a few of the usual instigators were missing. That kind of kept the speed down just a bit, allowing almost everyone to get into the paceline at one point or the other. As Giro Rides go, it was a pretty good one, and so I ended the week with a bit over 250 miles despite the shortened ride on Saturday.

On Monday, we somehow managed to get in the full ride before the rain, so that was nice. Then, on Tuesday, we had a good-sized group on hand for the longer ride out to the casino on the lakefront bike path. There was a pretty significant east wind blowing, so the ride out there felt smooth and fast. Of course, that ended when we turned around. Our speed had been around 25 mph all the way out, but was down to around 19 on the way back. Jess was on hand for this one, but somewhere along the bike path on the way out she disappeared. I figured she needed to get back early or something. Well, we were maybe halfway back when we saw her on the side of the bike path struggling with a flat tire. We stopped and got it fixed, of course.

Levee ride - status of the ongoing levee work

Wednesday morning I rushed out to the lakefront to meet up with the WeMoRi. It was dark, warm, quite windy, and humid. A trio of riders, that I had mis-identified as a car, flew past me on Lakeshore Drive. There was no way I could catch that, but of course I figured there would be a group right behind them. I looked back on Marconi and saw ... nothing.  When I got to Toussaint, I rode around in little circles trying to decided what to do. I figured maybe the rest of the group had turned off of Lakeshore Drive early because of the wind, so I had to decide whether to chase, or continue down Marconi to meet those three riders on their way back to the lakefront. Just about that time, a small group of three showed up, which turned out to be the remnant of the main group, so I jumped in with them. There was no way we were going to catch the lead break. Those guys must have been five minutes ahead. We kept up a pretty good pace anyway. One rider turned off somewhere along Wisner. 

Then, on the way back to the lakefront, Eddie C turned off at Toussaint, leaving just MJ and me. I was in front as we crossed Toussaint. It was still pretty dark. Anticipating the big section of missing asphalt that we've been skirting for the past month or two, I was way over to the left side of the right-hand lane with my hands just resting on my brake levers, when I hit a little bump/hole in the asphalt. That threw me forward, and took my hands off the bars entirely, so now I'm in some kind of warped supertuck position with basically no control over the bike. The insides of my thighs were rubbing the front tire as I tried to regain control, and ultimately lost it, going down pretty hard. That did some damage to the almost-new helmet, took some material off of my right shoe, and as I soon began to suspect, broke a few bones. I could barely lift my right arm at all. It didn't feel like a broken collarbone, at least the ones I've broken before, and I suspected it might be the scapula and ribs.  The Garmin's incident detection had been activated, sending a message to my wife who quickly called to see if I was OK, which I was not. MJ hung around until Candy showed up to bring me over to Lakeside Hospital for x-rays. The verdict:

No acute cardiopulmonary abnormality. Suspect nondisplaced fracture of the right lateral 3rd and 4th ribs without pneumothorax. Minimally displaced fracture of the superior border of the right scapula.

So I guess I'll be out for the count for a few weeks. With the Tour de La coming up next week, we are trying to get some additional volunteers since I won't be able to lift anything at all. I have an appointment for next Wednesday at TISM. In the meantime, I'm surviving on hydrocodone-acetaminophen and cyclobenzaprine. The shoulder is still quite painful, making some simple things, like lying down or putting on socks, a long and complex operation. 

For the Tour this year, JoePaul has been a huge help with sponsorship. He also has some T-shirts in the works. I ordered the trophies and bib numbers (going with just one per rider this year), and got some little imprinted tape measures made. The criterium will be at Lakeshore High, where we did the collegiate criteriums some years back. It's not a bad course, actually. The road race and time will be the same as last year. I haven't re-marked the turns and the TT start, finish, and turnaround, yet. I'm hoping I can do that Friday afternoon. Normally, I would have done a ride on the course this weekend and re-marked everything, but that just wasn't feasible under the circumstances.

Here we go again!