- The CRASH

So after my small success at the Eton Dorney Olympic Triathlon I was going into my last 3 weeks on a bit of a high. 

I rather cleverly booked off work 21st August - 11th September to really aide in my final preparations before the big day.

This was for two reasons, I had a submission deadline for my MSc Dissertation on the 4th of September and I needed to sort out all the logistics for getting myself/family & friends to Wales on the 10th of September.

Triathlons in general require a lot of admin. IRONMAN races are next level!!!

For the 3 weeks I had left, only one more week was planned with early starts and high volume. I was going to finish my training off with long ride and long run on the 19/20th of August respectively and then head into my taper feeling a million dollars. That was the plan... 

As for the long ride and run, I planned a 150km ride on the 19th and 30km run on the 20th. Up until this point my longest ride in the programme had been about 100km and I hadn’t run over 20km. 

The cycle....

As per most of my rides I didn’t find any friends to head out with me, so I charged my headphones, packed lots of food and drink and set off from my house for an extended cycle out to the Surrey Hills. 

Apart from my poor route planning, something which I still need to work on. The ride went well, it was just about doing the distance, not to be in certain HR zones or hitting speed/km goals. In fact I vaguely remember enjoying it!! 

It just so happened that as I did get up early, when it was time to head back towards Central London, I would be coming through Roehampton area about the time my old rugby team would be kicking off for their first league match of the season. As the sun was shining and I was pleased with my efforts I decided to stop off and watch the game. 140Km done. 

After the game I had one thing on my mind. A HUGE feed at Nando’s. However, it is this short 10km ride home which changed everything. 

I was unfortunate enough to be knocked off my bike by a car. The car was cutting through some traffic and hadn’t checked the inside lane and in doing so collided with me.

I have cycled in London for 3 years at this point, I have had a few near misses but nothing as dramatic and serious as this. 

I was sent flying over the side road (2 lanes) and left sprawled out on the footpath. If you have been unfortunate enough to be involved in a serious incident you will now in these situations, they happen so fast you don’t really remember what happened. 

From what I can remember, when I came around people were surrounding me, and my right leg was in unbearable pain. I remember wanting to sit up as I wanted to see the extent of the damage, I genuinely thought I was going to find my foot hanging off....

It wasn't, to my surprise I actually came off relatively well. I had some pretty big cuts all down my right side, including a cut to my head which of course bled a lot being a head injury. I will add of course I was wearing a helmet!!

My poor Felt F75 which had been a noble stead over the years was not in good shape, the frame was bent out of shape and therefore the bike was consequently written off. 

After about a 20 minute wait I was bundled into an ambulance and taken off to hospital for some X-rays. All of which came back negative. 

Later that night I was sent home from hospital (FYI I still got my massive Nando’s that evening) I remember feeling like I had been hit by a car..... Maybe that's a silly thing to say but I have payed rugby for 10+ years. Now, obviously I wasn’t the guy smashing people on a weekly basis, but there were occasions I had been involved in some hefty collisions..... the stiffness and pain I felt from the car accident though exceeded anything I had been exposed to before. 

At this point I thought IRONMAN Wales was out of the question. 

For the next few days I was completely bed ridden and tbh miserable. Mike was being his usual supportive self but in all honesty I think even he thought he was going to be doing the event alone. 

All I had to keep me occupied was cleaning my wounds and going through multiple rounds of ICE and Compression to help reduce the swelling. 

After a few days I had an appointment for an injection in my left knee which had been scheduled pre crash. I will write up a separate post detailing a niggle I was carrying in my left knee. 

It was after having this injection I started to think I may still be able to complete this IRONMAN......

First thing I needed to do was get a new bike.... I took a trip out to Road Cycle Exchange in Richmond and after digging through the vast amounts of kit, I found a Felt frame which was perfect, I laid down some cash and asked them to build me a bike fit for my IRONMAN attempt.... 8 days post crash I picked up my new stead... all 8kgs of it!!

Some pictures below.... I will do a separate post on the bike it's self.

IRONMAN Wales was back on the cards despite all advice from friends and family.

I now had 2 weeks of tapering to complete, lot's of Brickwood coffee and avocado on toast as well as 1 submission deadline to meet.....

Next post will be pre IRONMAN prep.