I mentioned in that post a rider who was one of the stronger riders out on the Hour of Power that morning. He was a visitor from Pennsylvania participating in the ride for the first time. His name is Ben Fetterman and he is famous — or infamous — for his distinction of being one of only two riders to go over the wall during a crash at the Valley Preferred Cycling Center velodrome.

Ben Fetterman goes over the wall - Photo © Anthony Skorochod

Ben, a promising track racer, was racing Pro-1-2 on the track at the time. Several riders brushed on the back stretch causing a collision which sent riders and their brake-less track bikes sliding across the ground. That is, all the riders but Ben. As you can see in the photo above, Ben went up on the railing — and then over.

He would have probably been okay except he landed at the base of the grandstands you see to the left of the picture. He slid on the concrete at the base and slammed into the support structure holding up the seats. The ground caused such a bad road rash that Ben said he spent more time in the burn center than he did with any other doctor. It must have been pretty bad rash because looking at his shin, it looks like he spent a good amount of time with the doctor on that one!

There was a huge scar running down the front of his leg. He said that he has very little feeling there. He also continues to battle back and neck pain. Still, it hasn’t kept him off the bike.

Fetterman currently races category 3 road and criterium races — no more track. He said it was a combination of physical limitations and nerves that keeps him off the track. He is currently trying to find his way back into competition. He looks good. He rides well. He is young.

We both agreed. It is just good to be able to go out and turn the pedals. The competitive urge isn’t gone, it just isn’t the most important thing about riding our bikes now days.

As for crashing? It actually isn’t something I dwell on while riding. Sure, after a near miss like Saturday it all comes washing back over me. A couple of times as I’ve found myself in a tight spot, I have felt the nerves grab hold. However, with each new hour on the bike the thoughts fade farther and farther from my mind.

I’m coming back. My top end power is back. My functional threshold is increasing. I’m building my endurance. Most of all, I am growing more and more mentally confident on two wheels. I’m outrunning the crash.

I’ll confess. I have cheated. I didn’t wear my brace a whole lot while on vacation last week.

I knew that when the neck brace came off it would be pretty painful. While the bones have healed nicely, I still have had a bit of neck trauma from the accident coupled with weeks of immobility. The bottom line is the muscles in my neck are a wreck.

The hope was that by taking the brace off a bit more last week, I could get a head start on the recovery. I knew that the bones were healed because we had originally scheduled my appointment during that week. Had I not been on vacation I could have removed it then.

Whew, when I first went several hours without it, I realized that just getting the brace off didn’t mean I was healed! The tendons in my neck were like hard rubber. Used to be it was the brace keeping me from turning my head right and left. Without the brace, it was the muscles.

By the end of the time without the brace, I had a headache and I was physically tired from holding my head up. It is kind of a weird feeling. You typically don’t think about your head. It is just there. However, when you go through a neck injury like this, you get reintroduced to the weight of your noggin.

Now for the good news. I have seen progress. If I can keep reminding myself to relax, I have found I can go longer and longer without the brace. I think I have gotten a weeks head start on recovery. I need it… the 2010 Ride for Mike is less than two months away!

My ace in the hole is Dr. Mruz of Eastside Chiropractic. At the beginning of this season I had quite a few issues due to a pretty bad crash at the end of last season compounded by overdoing it on the Challenge to Conquer Cancer ride that October. Dave took me on as a special project and he is one of the reasons why I was able to see such success during the first part of this season.

He is determined to get me moving again. He is going to be an important team member for a successful event this September. It all starts today once I leave the neurosurgeon. I’ll then head over to Eastside Chiropractic and start the road to strength.

It is a road I’m ready to ride up!

My closet got cleaned when I had my accident that took me off the bike. It certainly wasn’t that I wanted to empty that part of the closet! Still, for a couple of weeks that space was a vacuum waiting to get filled.

I did get back on the trainer and the first week of the Tour De France put in about 7 hours of trainer time. Then LIFE hit me and the vacuum of the empty spaces started to pull in other fillers. The bike — my Tour De Basement — suffered because of it.

On a positive side, I needed to devote more time to some areas of my life. I’m in a time of transition at work. There are also changes taking place at The Worthwhile Company. Of course, there are always more opportunities to spend time with your family.

All those things have pulled me away from the bike. In some ways, it has been a reality check. When I step back and look at it honestly, I have to accept the fact that the bike was probably taking a little too much space in my closet. I realize that not only did it take away from the time I have to spend with other important things, it also saps the amount of energy and motivation I have to devote to those things.

Now, this isn’t an announcement that I am giving up the bike! Oh no. I miss the bike and I can’t wait to get back onto it. However, I do believe I am much wiser in how I’ll approach the bike when I get back on. The bike needs to enhance all aspects of my life — not take away from those areas.

Basically, what this means is that I am going to have to have more realistic goals concerning my competitive nature. To this point, I have been driven to always be at the front. That is why I was so pumped to be at the front in the Category 4 peloton. However, I also understand the devotion it took to get there!

As I have now moved up into the Category 3 field — and more than that, the 35+ Masters field — I understand what it will take to move up into the upper ranks of that group. Do I doubt that I could do it? Absolutely not. Do I think that it would be best for me to give that amount of devotion to the sport to get there? The answer is no.

My approach must be that I will be as competitive as I can be with the time I am able to give. That means I may end up being field fodder at times. It means I will be a worker bee and not a podium finisher. The competition will have to be within myself. More than that, the objective (at my age and status in life) needs to be focused more on having fun and staying in shape than on winning races and moving into a new, tougher category.

We’ll see how that works out. I’m a competitive person and I do love riding my bike. We’ll see how long my closet will keep the new arrangement!

The bike as I like to remember it

As with many things evil, The Demon Bike was a work of beauty and I had to sacrifice to get it. I sold my Specialized Tarmac Pro and my back up bike, a Specialized Allez. It gave every reason for me to believe it would be a great relationship. I used the bike nearly through the entire 2009 race season.

The first crack in our relationship

Now as I think back, that year was a very rough one. I went down several times – not all of them on the black Giant (what I took to calling it later when I replaced it with a white Giant). The ultimate fall came at the 2009 SC State Road Racing Championship. I was taken out by another rider and ended up pretty beat up. The Giant was beat up more with the top tube cracked right through (see the above image).

I thought the bike was gone. I even replaced it with my current bike — a white 2010 Giant TCR Advanced. Perhaps it should have stayed that way. However, I learned that the frame could be repaired. Seeing how I missed having a back-up bike, I thought it might be a good idea to spend the several hundred dollars to get the bike back in my stable. I did and was impressed with the results.

That brings us to the end of the story. I used the bike for several events and for setting up a test of the iBike powermeter. Then I got some really fly Boyd wheels that just set the black frame off perfectly. I found myself drawn to ride the black Giant more and more.

So it was that loaded up the bike configured as you see it in the first photo above. I planned to race it for the first time since bringing it back on the road. Perhaps I never should have. Just several hours after the above picture was taken the bike looked like this.

The aftermath of the final crash

Notice the head tube and front fork. The bike broke above and below the head tube. That is a lot of force folks! Actually, since this incident, I’ve learned the regional Giant rep is taking a picture of the bike around with him. In his words, “That is pretty impressive!”

Notice the front fork and wheel

It is funny, I raced most of my 2010 season on the white Giant. I had some close calls as you always will in a Category 4 race, but I never went down. Life was good! Multiple podium finishes had me upgraded to Category 3 and the sky seemed to be the limit.

Then In my first race back on the black Giant — and my first as a Category 3 racer — I had the hardest crash of my life! I’m now out for the season. Wow, even if I could repair that bike frame (not only was the headset and front fork damaged, the head tube was also crushed), I don’t think I would do it! It is time to put The Demon Bike away!

Now, this post is tongue in cheek. I don’t really believe that a bike can contain some type of evil energy that would cause me to wreck. I would more prefer to think that God allowed me to wreck on the black frame so I wouldn’t ruin my white one!

It is just kind of funny how that when I first put the two bikes — a white one and black one — together I joked that they were like the two angels on your shoulders. The black one was the bad angel and the white one the good. I just find it ironic that the joke seemed to be true!

One of the hardest parts of all of this was wondering what my exact condition might be. My injuries could be anything between a slight crack with a quick time of healing to something that could possibly require surgery. I just didn’t know.

My visit with the neurologist took a load off my mind! Turns out it was the former. I nearly started laughing with relief when he said, “What we’ll do is have you come back here in three weeks. We’ll take some pictures and if things come out the way I expect, we’ll get you out of that collar.”

He showed me the CT scan images and there were certainly obvious fractures in my neck and skull. The key was that they happened on only one side. Actually, the skull fracture didn’t bother him at all. He cleared me to do what I wanted to within reason as long as I wore the brace.

The beautiful redhead asked him would there be any future limitations on what I could do and would that spot be a weakness that could bring about future injury. He said, “No, actually, the bone will be stronger there because there will be more mass from the healing.” In other words, there is no reason why I shouldn’t be able to ride again!

Three weeks! That is much better than the eight to ten weeks I was expecting. Looks like I’ll be getting out of the neck brace about the same time I get the cast off of my thumb.

Speaking of the thumb. I’m starting to be able to wiggle it within the cast. I can even grasp light objects with my fingers an thumb. The pain of the weekend in gone and other than the itching from the healing I’m not feeling anything when my hand is relaxed.

So, just the fact that the prognosis for both my neck and thumb is 100% recovery has made my healing take off. It is amazing how your mind and affect your healing. Definitely a positive approach helps! Yesterday, I took the time to rest my back and neck. By that evening, much of the tension that had been causing the majority of my pain was gone.

The one thing that does bring on the pain is working at a computer. Something about the angle at which I have to hold my head and the typing with a maimed hand causes the tension to really build up. After typing blog, I’m going to focus on projects that won’t require typing!

Next week, I will be on the trainer. I can’t wait to get back out there with you all! Yep, things are turning around!

What is it? Skier’s Thumb is actually pretty broad. It involves any damage to the soft tissue between the thumb and the rest of the hand. In some cases it is the spraining of the ligaments, but is more severe cases it ranges from a tearing of the ligament to an actual separation from the bone.

In my case, there is a small portion of the bone of my thumb — the portion my ligament happens to be connected to — that has broken off from the thumb. This means the ligament is pretty much useless. I can tell this because I can’t pick up anything with any weight. Also, if I pick up something light and then try to manipulate it, I can’t. It pops right out of my hand.

So, this morning at 9:15 I’ll be going into the hospital as an outpatient. They’ll do all their prep work and by 11:15 I’ll be ready have my thumb cut open. Don’t worry, I’m not taking pictures this time. The doc will put a small plate called a suture anchor in there that will help hold the bone and ligament in place and within 30 minutes I’ll done.

They won’t put me under for the procedure. Actually, they are going numb half my arm. It is the Bier Block. It is pretty cool. They will put a device like a blood pressure band around my left arm. However, instead of letting off on the pressure, they will keep it engaged. This will “trap” the medicine in the arm and only half my arm will go numb.

The advantage to this is that once the operation is done, they can release the pressure and the medicine will then dissipate through the rest of my body and I’ll have use of my arm much faster than if they were to do a full regional nerve block on my arm.

I’m sure I’ll come out of there with some sort of cast. My guess is that it will be a removable one. John James told me to make sure that they molded it so that it would fit properly over the hood on my left handlebar. I’m not too worried about that right now.

I have a good feeling about the future use of the thumb. The doc said that we could attempt to heal it with immobilization, but that gave me a 70% chance of success. With the surgery, he gives me 95%. I guess I’m thinking positively. I think with the good work of Dr. Brown and proper physical therapy following, I’ll have my thumb issues straightened out before my neck brace comes off.

I’ll let you know how it goes!

Oh, if you haven’t gone by CrankListed.com and voted for LowCadence.com, be sure to do it this weekend. Voting for the best blogs in each category ends on the 6th. It was an honor just to be nominated. Who knows if the blog might get the most votes.

I’m no Christian Vande Velde, but my broken bones hurt just as much as his do. My responsibilities don’t revolve around the bike and I have no aspirations finishing on the podium in the Tour De France — no one is going to miss me not being on the bike. However, I do have a family to take care of, bills to pay, and a job to do. As I lay there over a week ago looking up at the EMT who was putting my neck in a brace, I just wanted to crawl up into a ball and go away.

Consider this when you take up the bicycle. If you are fortunate, you may go your whole career with only a little road rash for your pain. Some experience the pain multiple times. Others go for years before the tarmac snaps up to bring them down. When it happens know that there is more at stake than your body or the bicycle.

First, there is the bicycle. I don’t think I asked it this time, but I don’t know what I said — and I don’t want to know! However, for the cyclist who has put his own sweat and blood into building up his bike, one of his first concerns after going down is the condition of the bicycle. For me… crushed front wheel, broken top tube, busted front fork, warped chain ring, and maybe some issues with the shifters. The bike is done.

Then there is the body. This one is pretty obvious. When you go down, be blessed to find if all you have is road rash. Probably the most common injury is the broken collar bone. For me it was a broken neck — ok, I say that for effect — a fractured C1 vertebra and fractured skull, fractured left thumb and ring finger, and two broken teeth along with a busted lip.

What you might not consider is time. This kind of goes along with the body. I have used up over a week of my sick time. I have already had the first surgery on my teeth and I have another one coming up on Friday for my thumb. All of this had me out of work for a week and now I’m only allowed to come in half days. Soon the sick days will be gone and I’ll be down to using my vacation days.

There is also the time at home. I can’t do much of anything. Sleep comes in amounts of 2 to 3 hours. I watch the grass getting higher, knowing I can’t do anything about it. The beautiful redhead has to put my socks on for me in the morning among a myriad of other extras that my injuries place on her.

Of course, this all comes to meet you at the wallet. I am SOOOO thankful for the health care provided by my employer. In many cases the hospital expenses are 100%. However, due to the time delays for me seeing certain doctors, I will have to pay 20% for some of the work. The loss of sick days and vacation days is also like losing money. Then there the money in the bike, etc.

These are some of the reasons I am mad at the bike. What makes me hate the bike? It is because my love for riding and desire to be out there competing on one has taken me off of it. Everything that has gone into this wonderful season seems suddenly like vapor. A couple weeks ago I was complaining about having to upgrade to Category 3 and messing up some of my goals for the year.

Now, I just wish I could ride.

I guess in my convoluted mental state I have to say that my love for the bike is what makes me hate it so right now. The thing is, I know I’ll start messing around and have a bike ready to move onto the trainer. It won’t be long before I’ll start spinning. Before the end of the season, I’ll be back out there. Perhaps I will have a different mindset, but I can’t see myself just sitting on the sidelines.

For now, I do feel like curling into a ball and  just make all the hard things that have come from this go away. However, as Christian went on to say, “I had my days when I was down but you just pick yourself up and dust yourself down. There’s no reason crying about it.” So, thank you for allowing me to whine. Now, I’ve got some dusting to do.

Unfortunately, I won’t be there… at least not on my bike. Even if I  could be on a bike, it wouldn’t be the bike I raced yesterday.  It has now seen better days.

The aftermath

Now I am attempting to write this blog during periods of consciousness. I’m sitting here in bed with my left hand in a cast and a brace on my neck. Seems that I have a fractured C1 vertebra and a matching fracture on the base of my skull. I also have two broken molars on the right side of my mouth. Other than a busted lip that is it for my head.

I have what is called Skiers Thumb and a fracture at the tip of my ring finger on my left hand. Skiers Thumb is when you chip the bone that connects the tendon that allows you to close your thumb. Right now, I can’t grab anything.

It was my first ever Category 3 race. About 20 of us lined up on the smooth nontechnical course. I wondered what would happen. I was a little perturbed because one of my teammates came down on me for riding the Cat. 3 race over the Masters 35+. “I was told to race the 3 race,” I told him. “By whom?” He asked. “By Jim (my coach),” I replied. He came back with, “Jim’s not on our team.”

Well, that made me angry, so I just closed my mouth and rode off. I carried a bit of that anger to the line and it made for some initial motivation when the racers rolled off. When they did, I knew right off that it was going to be a different ball game.

There were attacks right away. A couple of the teams had more than one rider. I was the only POA rider in the field. My strategy was to move from chase to  chase. I wanted to stay of the front, but I did want to be in position to make it into any break that looked strong.

Barley’s Taproom and DeMaine had the numbers in the field. Barley’s was very active in the beginning with DeMaine chasing them down. Thankfully, that meant I didn’t have to do much chasing on my own.

I kept an eye mainly on Eric Peterson and Jon Nutting. Along with their other teammates they were rolling a pretty good race. They were trading off testing one attack after another. Of course, Adam Britton and Jake Strasser with the Metro Team were playing a similar game to mine and I figured they would factor into the finish.

Then came a call for a prime. It was a cash prime. Hmmmm, I could use an extra $20. As we came up to the sprint zone it was me and Eric. As I slowly pulled up beside him during the sprint, I thought to myself, “He is probably laughing at you because he knows you are wearing yourself out early.” Still, I got my $20.

Eric and one other rider that is only a fuzzy memory kept the pressure on after I let up a little to recover from my effort. We started down the hill that made up the sweeping turn on one side of the course. I had a decision to make… 1) go back into the field, or 2) go after them.

I don’t recall everything clearly from that point on. I think I realized that those guys could not stay out there for the entire time remaining. I should get in the field and live to fight another day. The last thing I remember from the race was moving to the right in order to be out of the way of the field.

The next thing I remember was looking up at an EMT. I’ve heard varying stories of what happened, but I think the most plausible one (based on my last recollections and witnesses) is… I moved right to make room. I probably dropped my head to relieve tension in my neck. At that point, the road straightened out back to the left which caused me to slip over the curb.

I believe what happened then was my bike hit a drainage hole cover — those solid concrete blocks with a manhole cover in the middle. Witnesses said I then extended up in the air from the handlebars. I came down on my head, neck, and back and then bounced into the air again to come to rest on my back.

That is it. The good news is that I know I can race Category 3. The bad news is that I don’t know when I’ll be able to do it again.

I am thankful to my God that He protected me. I was just a few movements away from being paralyzed. I was also way too close to having to wear one of those halos! The doctors were discussing the possibility, but decided to hold off.

Whatever the case, this is the one and only article about this crash. So, read this one because it is the last one. From here, I look ahead. I still have plans to finish my 2010 Ride For Mike. We’ll see what happens after that.

As I was leaving the race Sunday afternoon, I talked with a fellow racer. He was limping up to his vehicle pushing his bike. I had heard that there was a crash, but didn’t know all the details because I was having to leave immediately following the race. So, as I was changing my shoes he explained that he had run into the fallen riders and went over the handlebars.

I asked him if he was okay and the condition of the other riders. He said he was okay and that he thought the others were as well except someones bike got really messed up and the first rider who went down got run over. However, I didn’t realize just how the crash went down until I saw the following photo sent to me by Jake Strasser of Team Metro.

A wide view of the final sprint - and crash (click to enlarge)

As I began to piece the story together this is what I discovered. Soon after Wade Greene and I launched the sprint a rider went down. “For no apparent reason,” I was told by one racer. That caused a chain reaction as riders scattered across the width of the road to avoid getting caught up in the mess.

Closer view of the lead and the crash

Unfortunately, not everyone was able to avoid it. Ryan Newman, of Velosports Racing out of Hendersonville, got the worse of it. He hit the riders at speed and flipped over coming down to separate his shoulder and break two fingers. The rider who initially went down broke the frame of his bike.

Ryan Newman flips after running into fallen riders

In the photo above, you can see Ryan still attached to his pedals getting ready to basically body slam into the ground. His rear wheel is up higher than the riders’ heads around him. Others narrowly escaped sharing his fate. Michael Trivette, from Concord, commented, “The guy flipping hit my back while he was in the air. I was so close to hitting the deck!”

Of course, the best place to be in all of this was up front. Though I do believe it is misleading to say that it is always safer up front. Crashes happen there as well.

Photo by Eddie Helton - http://picasaweb.google.com/Eddie.Helton

How do you avoid crashes? Well, I can hear some of my friends snickering as they think of me trying to answer that question. However, I think these suggestions are reasonable.

• Realize that the field is like an organism. Everyone is interconnected and the slightest move you make can be magnified several riders away from you. Racing while aware of the people around you for the purpose of keeping them out of a crash is one of the best ways to avoid one yourself.
• Learn who you are riding with! As soon as the race starts, begin cataloging the behaviors of the riders around you. Some you won’t even notice because they will be smooth as silk. Others will stick out like a sore thumb because of their brake checks, switching lines without clearing, and crossing wheels. STAY AWAY – WAY AWAY!
• Practice your skills. One of the things that has helped me has been learning how to take contact in a race. You cannot be afraid of being touched. Invariably someone is going to bump into you. Do not over react. “Receive” the contact – don’t react away from it.
  Also, don’t get verbal. I know it is hard to keep our mouths shut, but when someone makes a mistake, it does not help at all to berate them verbally. All you do is raise the intensity and level of frustration — ultimately raising the probability of an accident!
• Know the terrain and conditions. Donaldson Center is a great example of this danger. First, there are several potholes and the famous train tracks. Second, there is the wind that is always a crosswind – then a headwind – then a tailwind. Third, there are the hills.Immediately after gathering speed down a hill, it is time to start climbing the next one. That guy that just went flying past you suddenly begins to fade on the climb. Another rider tries to go around him on the edge of the road and ends up riding in the grass just as a crosswind pushes him back toward the field. You get the idea!

If everyone rode with these ideas in mind, that would take care of many of the crashes that happen in amateur racing. Of course, even professionals crash and 60+ people on bicycles riding inches away from each other at 25 – 40 mph are bound to have some problems.

I’m empathizing with Ryan and the other guys that went down. Hopefully, they will all be back on the bike soon. Me? I’m staying close to the front!

Reece is on third wheel going into the final turn... a little too hot.

After the race I talked with Reece and he told me what happened.  He felt he was in a very good position – the third rider back.  This is a good place to be because you are not on the front exploding, but not too far back to make up ground.

He was wanting to accelerate out of the turn to maintain momentum.  Throughout the race he had been able to pedal through this corner.  However, at those times he probably was not quite as aggressive in his lean.  This time his pedal hit the ground.

Its a pedal in the asphalt that lifts the rear wheel for the slide.

When that happens, you lose grip on your rear tire.  Consider that cyclists basically have a total of three square inches in contact with the tarmac.  That ain’t a lot and it doesn’t take much to make it even less.  When that happens you’re going for a ride!

Down he goes with Bill and Rodney taking evasive action.

Thankfully, you can see Reece’s momentum was forward.  So his slide continued primarily in that direction rather than out toward the outside of the turn.  In the above picture you can see Bill Short barely avoiding him on the outside while Rodney Dender is having to take an aggressive inside line to avoid the fallen rider.

Ouch, Reece was easily over 20 mph when he went down.

Yep, it could have been a lot worse.  Mostly Reece is hating that he didn’t get to see where that third wheel position would take him.  Going down is bad, but knowing you had a good finish in you and not seeing it happen is even worse.

No cyclists or bicycles were permanently damaged in the taking of these photos.  Reece will be up to ride again!  Thanks, Jake, for letting me post the photos here.  Keep up the good work behind the lens and on the bike.