I had a great ride on Tuesday evening. It was the first of the season’s Ladies Rides and we had perfect temps, clear skies and dry trails. A couple of my friends were on their way, but were running late, so I took the opportunity to warm up by climbing up the downhill and riding through the woods to our meeting spot.

Being warm before starting a group ride is a fabulous thing. Especially when riding a singlespeed. That first climb out of the parking lot is nothing, but hurts like all heck when you’re cold. So it was an auspicious start for me to feel so good at the start of our ride.

We pieced together a new route amongst the loops, I took them to places they’d never been before. I’d been there, but only once and never in that order. This new route is good, much better than riding it the other way and provides fun access to my favorite trail via a singletrack climb versus a dumb doubletrack climb.

All was well, I was just riding along when for some reason my left hand came off of the bars, my right hand jerked as I hit a root and I went down. Hard. Crushing my leg between the ground, my frame and my body. It was one of those crashes that just smarts. I knew nothing was seriously hurt so i picked myself off the ground and sniffed to myself as we rode off. 

img_0163See the damage? It hurt. I followed this up with smashing my knee into my stem several times so that’s black and blue too. And then once i was banged up, I kept fobbling on all the technical bits and re-smashing my leg and knee into my bike.

The past couple of days i’ve been riding the cross bike on roads and dirt roads so as to avoid smashing my legs again. We’re headed up to Burke for the weekend and I want all my appendages to be happy.