Play hard, get hurt

That’s just the nature of it. You play hard, sometimes you get hurt.

I’ve been having a pretty incredible streak of strong health and good luck lately. I haven’t been sick for over a year. Haven’t had a crash or other injury for even longer. I’ve felt stronger and stronger the more I ride. Even allergies have been a non-issue, despite the overabundance of pollen in the air this spring. I’ve had to pinch myself on multiple occasions. Can a guy really be this lucky?

For a while now I’ve wondered, in the back of my head, when the streak might end and, how. I got my answer this past weekend at the AES Prescott Monstercross Race.

photo by Eric Nelson

After a few miles of neutral rolling on pavement, the group hit ‘the Dells.’ The Dells were a last minute addition to the route, featuring some of the most brilliantly technical trail anywhere, and lots and lots of rock.

just look at all that rock

There was only a hand drawn GPS track for this section, so my plan was to stick with the locals, Dan Hight and Eric Nelson. Both are strong singlespeed heroes who ride the Dells often and know the lines (and race route) by heart.

I was able to keep Dan in sight, while alternating between following Eric and and being coached by him. His love for this area was as plain as the day was bright, and it was equally clear how excited he was to show it to other like minded riders. A like minded rider I was — so much fun that it was easy to forget we were ‘racing.’ Favorite quotes from Eric included, “don’t follow my line!” before hopping up on a boulder across a narrow bridge to an even steeper roll out. And numerous, “take this turn wide!”, “up and over that rock!”, “off camber rock on the left!” pointers.

Too funny. At one point he started prepping me for a steep and complicated climb that he thought I might be able to clean. Both he and Dan jumped out of my way as Eric continued with the pointers. It was a toughie that sent my heart rate to the roof, but I made it. I heard Eric say to Dan, “see… I told you… best technical climber ever…” I laughed when I heard that (as if…). I reminded myself that I’m not invincible as I approached the next downhill, and quickly dabbed on a rock switchback that looked questionable. Eric and Dan passed me as I walked my bike down to the next creek crossing.

I heard Chad and another rider coming up over the climb and yelled, “did you clean that one Chad?”, in my best heckling voice. Right about then, while still walking the bike, I slipped on the rock and landed smack dab on the outside of my left foot. It knocked the wind out of me for a moment, but I kept walking, thinking “walk it off, walk it off.” The thought of serious damage went into my head, but I kept walking and it seemed functional.

It’s interesting that my other major mountain biking boo-boo was also related to heckling another rider over not cleaning a section. I smacked my face into a boulder on Mt. Graham after making fun of my brother for dabbing on a section. And here I was harassing Chad. Of course Chad deserves any and all harassment, as we all know, but I can’t help but try to learn some humility from these incidents.

Now, to only point to these negative results would ignore the thousands of times I have heckled or otherwise poked fun at my friends, only to continue riding happily and be rewarded with laughter, camaraderie and more fun adventures. So I am pretty sure there isn’t a causal relationship. 🙂

photo by Eric Nelson

I had to take a few deep breaths before trying that crossing, and I can see in the photo how timid I was feeling. It was a good test though, as the ankle was painful but not unstable. I made it across without issue and proceeded to walk up the next hike-a-bike.

Riding felt good. Dismounting and hike-a-bike… not so much. And unfortunately this area held plenty of hike-a-bike.

photo by Eric Nelson

And more stream crossings. I was still really enjoying all the trail, but was moving slower and trying to be careful with the ankle. Dan got a large gap, and when I hit the next pavement section I had to pull out the cues to try to figure out where to go.

I now have a pretty good appreciation for folks that don’t have a GPS track and are trying to race by cues. It’s really hard. I followed something that pretty closed the matched the cue description, but doubt led me to stop and have a look around. Sure enough I saw Chad, Aaron and Eric zooming down a different road than what I was on.

Eric led us to the next section of trail, where Chad and I had fun cleaning steep slickrock climbs and hopping ledges. We’d pause a moment at confusing spots only to hear the Eric from behind, like a voice of god (as Chad called it), telling us where to go next.

Eventually the Dells were over. I sighed in relief, ready to finally test the ankle on some steady pedaling. After some confusing bike paths and more ‘voice of god’ help, my path finally converged with the GPS track on my screen.

It was go time. I kicked it into high gear, feeling fantastic, and caught sight of Dan as he was wrapping up a climb.

Dan Hight, 1st place

What followed was incredibly fun riding through the Granite Basin area. The ups were never very long and the downhills were fast and seemed long. Dan is a very skilled bike handler — no way I could match his speed on the downs, but it was becoming apparent that he was getting tired on the uphills. It was nice to follow behind him, though, because I was beginning to fear dismounting and hiking. Watching him I could tell if I had a chance of cleaning a climb or not. If he got off I’d do the same, at the same spot, not wanting to risk an errant dismount.

I was having a blast and feeling strong, but the internal debate of whether to continue on the ankle was eating me up. Eventually it got painful enough that I knew the answer. At the next major road crossing I was done. Dan let me go on a steep climb and I got a bit of a gap on him. He was relieved to see me at the next crossing where he stopped to tell me how best to get back on roads, then wished me well.

I pulled my shoe off and was happy to not see any black/blue, but I did see swelling. I took some ibuprofen, waited for my friends to come by so I could cheer them on, then got to pavement mashing. Strangely I was really happy riding through town, even as I worried about my ankle and got buzzed by traffic. It was just such a beautiful day, and the wind felt good. I had already accepted it, knowing that my luck couldn’t last forever.

After, I walked around far too much, finding ice/wrap, going out to wait for the first rider (Dan) on the course and getting pizza for the finishers. Stupid stupid stupid, but it didn’t hurt that much and I figured it was just a minor sprain that I had played very conservatively by dropping out, thinking ahead to the AZT race.

By the time we got back to Tucson later that night, my ankle was in pretty bad shape. Click here if you want to see what it looked like. Warning — it’s a fat and ugly looking foot — I’m not going to post it here, inline.

So now I am applying RICE and doing everything else I can think of to minimize the swelling. I am hopeful that I’ll be riding (roads) soon, but we’ll see how it goes. I was about to start tapering for the AZT, anyway, so it is somewhat good timing, but I am not so sure a race like the 300 (and especially not the full AZT race with the Grand Canyon hike) is such a good idea — plenty of hike a bike and opportunity to re-injure it, even if I can tolerate the pedaling. In fact, I already bailed on the full AZT over on the thread at bikepacking.net. We’ll see about the 300.

And so the streak ends. Play hard, get hurt. I’ll accept it for now.