I have not spent much time on my mountain bike this year due to weather, the gastroc injury and time constraints, so I was a bit nervous as to my comfort level on the tougher technical sections both courses would feature. We had planned a pre-ride trip to Raccoon Mountain on July 3 that was rained out. Every ride I planned at home was also met with terrible weather. I got in my first ride on the Remedy since early-December the day after Indy Crit. It was a play ride at home, hitting the jumps and drops just to get my nerve back and get the bike set up properly. I had not ridden the Remedy since I rebuilt the bushings and bearings over the winter. The ride was successful and I surprised myself by how good I was riding the big features. Shannon was riding well too, tackling the giant wooden tabletop for the first time. I think her good riding rubbed off on me!
We finally made it to Raccoon on Tuesday afternoon of this week. I was off work and Shannon got off at noon. We planned to ride a loop around the reservoir together, then I would do shuttle runs down the mountain until dark on the High Voltage and Live Wire trails to prepare for the weekend. Both of those trails have been built since the last time I rode here.
Reservoir overlook atop Raccoon Mountain
The weather was hot, but beautiful when we arrived. Some dark clouds began to roll in as we started the ride and it was shortly followed by the booms of thunder in the distance. The storms stayed in the river gorge and went north of the mountain. We stayed dry, but could see from the overlooks that all points north were getting slammed with heavy rain. We met a local rider at the East Overlook and chatted with him for a few minutes. He knew a lot about the courses for the enduro and gave me a few hints on what I should be riding. He also checked the radar on his phone and assured us the weather would stay north and east of us. It looked like we would surely get in a dry ride.
Along our route around the reservoir, I veered off into the technical Chunky trail and pre-rode the course for Stage 3 of the Enduro. This stage had a lot of rocks in the Chunky section, but also contained some fast singletrack and a lot more pedaling than I was expecting. For those of you who do not know much about an enduro, it is made up of several timed stages inside of a big ride. Everyone rides the same course. You are timed only on certain sections of the course, called stages, which are usually more downhill than up. In between stages, you only have a certain amount of time to get to the start of the next stage. The time allowed gives you ample recovery, but it's not enough time to let you dilly-dally around either. At most enduros, you do not know the course prior to the start of each stage. This format rewards those who can read the trail well. But not all venues have enough trails to make that possible. The Raccoon Mountain Enduro would be 25-28 miles in length with four timed stages. The first two stages would be down the 5.5-mile Live Wire trail. Stage 3 was to be on one of the lines through Chunky, then going by the Switchyard and onto part of the Small Intestine trail. The final stage would be down High Voltage. We would have to climb the mountain twice between stages, so it would take some legs to get through the race, not just skills. As for the Super D, it would be 5.5 miles long going all the way down the Live Wire trail to the boat ramp at the bottom of the mountain. So, learning Live Wire would be very beneficial as it made up half of the timed stages in the Enduro and was the Super D course.
The thunder stalked us and began to get louder as we started the long climb up Grindstone Ridge. As we neared the top, the rain came, followed by strong wind and lightning. The storm had finally topped the mountain. So much for our dry ride.
Shannon riding the Switchyard trail
It got so dark we could barely see the trail and were forced to stop. Trees were snapping with the wind and the lightning was striking very near us. I began to look for shelter and quickly saw a small cave overhang up the hill. We dropped our bikes on the side of the trail and ran for cover. The cave was small. We couldn't sit up straight without bumping our heads. It was a tight squeeze, but at least we were safe and mostly dry. We stayed in the cave for a good 30 minutes watching the storm thrash the mountain. At one point I thought I heard tornado sirens wailing from the Lookout Mountain area.
Squeezed in the cave waiting out the storm
Video: Our view from the cave as the storm moved away
It was so dark I could barely see Shannon coming down the trail. It was like midnight at 5pm!
Finally, the winds died down and the lightning ceased. It continued to rain and was super dark in the woods, but we began working our way down the ridge. Thunder could be heard in the distance as another storm approached from the same direction. We tried to seek shelter at the visitor center, but it was closed for construction. They had so much orange fencing up that we couldn't even get over to the building to find an overhang. We crouched under some trees until the lightning passed by, then made a break for it on the road. The rain beat us as we rode across the giant reservoir dam towards Laurel Point. Heavy fog rolled across the mountain and made it feel as if we were riding inside a cloud. Of course, the rain stopped just as we reached the car. I was surprised to see another car in the parking lot. Someone else had been stuck out there too.
With the rain ending and the trail draining quickly, I decided to go ahead with my pre-ride. This was my only chance to see High Voltage and Live Wire, so I decided to do one run down each of them. There was a chance of rain in the forecast for the weekend, so there was a chance the trails would be in similar condition to this in the race. I went for High Voltage first since it was closer to where we parked and was supposed to be the more technical and dangerous of the two trails. It was the one everybody said I "must see" before hitting it at race speed. All the talk actually had me a little nervous. I had heard it was treacherous in spots with some high penalties for mistakes, especially near the top where there were some very tight switchbacks.
High Voltage was not at all what I was thinking. The switchbacks at the start of the trail are challenging, but I did not find them dangerous and the exposure I had heard about was not that bad. I actually felt much safer on this descent than on the Thunder Rock Express on the Tanasi Trails near Ocoee, TN. Thunder Rock has several small jumps you want to get air on, but can't because they are followed by sharp turns that have a huge cliff on the outside of the turn. There is no blowing a turn on Thunder Rock....unless you want to die. I found all the High Voltage jumps could be hit at full speed and the sharp turns were visible in time to get things slowed down. I was having a ton of fun and again surprised myself by how fast I was going. It was wet, but not very slick with the fast-draining rocky soil. I had on a new rear tire on, a more aggressive 2.35" Minion, which was providing excellent traction. I had a faster rolling 2.35" Larsen TT on the front. Traction was fine with the Larsen, but on the faster sections I could feel it flexing a lot and even slammed the rim a few times on roots. I decided I would put a Minion on the front for the race.
Towards the bottom of the trail it begins to flatten out and has some false-flat drags. It became apparent that this stage of the enduro would be won with pedaling. I was really starting to like this stage! I knew I could fly at the top, and if I paced myself right I could smash these pedaling sections at the end with my roadie legs. Both stages I had ridden thus far really played into my favor with the amount of pedaling available. I was probably riding with a big smile on my face.
Then everything changed in a flash. I went into a gentle right-hand turn with a big berm and the front wheel got out from under me before I could blink an eye. I was immediately on the ground sliding through the turn. It was like ice! My right leg got pinned between my top tube and my handlebar as I slid. The slick trail kept me sliding and the berm held me in the trail. I slid all the way through the turn like a bobsled. I hit pretty hard. My right leg hurt very deeply. I squirmed in the mud for a minute, then wrestled with my bike to get my leg unpinned. Once free, I hopped up to try to walk off the pain. It was a minute before I looked down at my knee. When I did, I could see an enormous amount of blood pouring down my right shin. I could see a large gash over my patella with blood pumping out from between the gobs of mud. It looked like I was going to need some stitches which made me get a little mad at myself. I wasn't even pushing it hard and now I'm going to the dang ER! It was just a simple little fall. But it's the little ones that always seem to do the most damage. My leg still hurt around the tibial plateau. I could barely put weight on it and was worried I had a small fracture. The chain was all wrapped all around the front derailleur and it took some struggling to get it straight. I checked my leg out a little better as I remounted the bike. There was still a lot of blood coming out and it was starting to get scary. I pinched my knee together with my muddy hand and started to ride out with one leg. I thought about calling Shannon, but did not see that would help. If she came in to get me I was still going to have to limp out with her help so I might as well get moving now and get to the car quick to stop the bleeding.
I had to ride about 10 minutes to get to the boat ramp where Shannon was waiting. I was not moving very fast with just one leg pushing over the pedals. Of course, there were lots of rocky sections and even some uphill left to ride. I rode a lot of things, but had to get off on some of the ups and drag my right leg behind me as I hiked. I grunted my way out to the car and could see the horror on Shannon's face as I came out covered in blood. She poured water on my knee to halfway clean the wound and get all the mud off my legs, but I was scared to let go of the wound. It was bigger than I initially thought. There was no doubt I was getting stitches tonight. We tied a sweatshirt around the wound and got me into some cleaner clothes. Then we called our friend Tavis, who went to school at UT-Chattanooga, to ask him where the closest hospital was.
Tavis guided us to Erlanger Hospital in downtown Chattanooga. The ER was very busy. Apparently, Erlanger is the main trauma and cardiac center of Chattanooga. There were plenty of car accidents coming in from rush hour traffic and from the storm, not to mention a lot of heart attacks and even a few possible strokes. I hardly felt like I should be in line with these people. We had my bleeding controlled so I was in no real danger anymore. Even the deep ache had subsided and I was no longer worried about a fracture. We asked if there was a walk-in clinic somewhere in town that could just stitch me up, but the staff was not helpful. They were too busy to even look at me. I asked for gause as blood was still running down my leg and about to get in the floor. It was a chore for them to even get me a gause pad. I thought fine, I'll bleed all over your floor if you don't care. Nobody even looked at the wound until I was finally called back after waiting for an hour. Good thing the sweatshirt had slowed the bleeding considering how much I had lost on the trail. Even when they took my vitals, they were too busy to really tend to me and I wound up taking my own blood pressure, heart rate and temperature. It was kind of crazy. How accurate can your blood pressure reading be when you took it yourself while standing up?! I would have said they were rude, but I will cut them some slack because they were very busy. I have been busy at work and I know it can be hard to deal with that many patients so I felt for them.
I was not impressed with the start of my ER experience, but once I got to the back, they were very good and it was worth the wait. The nurse that took me back was super nice and is a mountain biker. He was hounding me about not wearing knee pads. Bad thing about this crash was that I actually brought knee pads to use on my shuttle runs. After the chaos of the storm and my excitement to get back on the trail I forgot to put them on before going out on High Voltage. They protected the trunk really well. It didn't get cut at all.
Actually, every person that tended to me in the ER was a mountain biker, which was very cool as they all had a little more sympathy than a normal person would have. At first, it seemed like a simple sew-up. Then they cleaned the wound and it became clear that it was worse than any of us thought.. The blood had hidden the size and depth of the cut. The cut was just below my patella, across my patellar tendon and over to the lateral side of the knee. I could actively work my knee fine so the patellar tendon was clearly not damaged. The deepest section was on the side of the knee. They took x-rays just to make sure there were no rocks inside the wound, which made me happy since I was initially concerned about a fracture. The x-ray showed no rocks and no fractures.
It still seemed this would be easy. They cleaned it again to get some grass out of the deeper section of the wound. Then the doc got very concerned. He feared the wound was deep enough to have damaged my joint capsule. That would be very bad and require a major surgery. You can check the capsule by what they referred to as "challenging the joint." Basically, it's the opposite of removing fluid from the knee. You insert a huge needle into the joint and inject fluid into the capsule. If the fluid then leaks out of the wound the joint capsule has been compromised. It sounded awful. I was not in much pain, but I was squirming from the needles. I absolutely hate them. The thought of a bigger one going inside my knee made me squirm even more. You will never have to worry about this guy ever doping. Not only am I against cheating, I am against needles. I would die before giving myself EPO injections or doing blood transfusions. No way I will ever want to win that bad.
The main doctor probed my knee to check the depth, then had another doctor check it as well. They were on the fence about challenging the knee. They did not want to put me through that unless it was necessary, but also did not want to sew me up with joint damage that would require a later surgery. An orthopedic doctor came down to take a look and he visually inspected the capsule. Yeah, the cut was that deep. He spent about 10 minutes with a probe deep inside my knee poking at the capsule. It was the most uncomfortable thing I have ever felt. He said he could see the lateral side of the capsule and it was intact so he did not feel we needed to challenge it. Shew! Dodged that one!
In the end, it was just a simple sew up, but it sure was scary for a minute. Who would have thought sliding out in a turn could do so much damage. I have slid out dozens of times with nothing more than some road rash-type scrapes, but evidently there was a rock sticking up out of the trail this time and it got me. The doctor spaced the stitches out pretty far so I could start range of motion exercises immediately and get back to the bike quicker. That's why I like having a rider doing the work on me. He not only was a mountain biker, but was from Paducah, KY and went to Murray State University. He had ridden at Land Between the Lakes on the Canal Loop and knew several of the Wood-N-Wave team members that I know. It's a small world.
We were in the hospital for more than four hours. It was a long drive back and we got home at 2 am. By some miracle, I was off work on Wednesday, but Shannon had to be at work by 7. She got very little sleep. Three hours of sitting in a car is not the best after a crash like that. I was stiff and sore to say the least.
I could barely walk on Wednesday and I was very weak, which they said was from the blood loss. By Thursday, I was feeling better and could bend my knee enough to drive so I went to work. I was worried about being on my feet for eight hours, but I survived. My coworkers and even some of the patients were very kind and helped me as much as they could. I am really impressed by how much I have improved already. Still, the wound is very deep and in a bad spot being right across my joint, so I'll be off the bike for probably 10 days, maybe more. I am out of the Intelligentsia Cup in Chicago next week and the Crossroads Classic the following week in North Carolina. It sucks to miss those races as I feel like I am on good form and they were target races for me. I was really excited for Chicago because they were Cat. 2/3 races and gave me a better chance at a top finish. But it is not to be this year. I am grateful that I only have a flesh wound and some bruises. I could have easily had joint damage or a fracture and been out for the season. Maybe even longer. I am counting my blessings for sure! I want to say thanks to everyone that has helped me out, from guiding us to the hospital to stitching me up and helping me at work. Of course, Shannon gets the most thanks for just putting up with me. She not only helps me get around the house, but also has to put up with me being bored. I really don't know what to do when I can't ride or work outside.
Below is a small picture of the wound as I waited in the ER. This was after the first cleaning that we did in the parking lot. If you don't like bloody stuff, time to scroll on down.
Speaking of being outside, here are some pictures from our garden. If you compare them to the pictures from the blog on May 23, you can really see how much the garden has grown.
Peanuts and peppers
The extra rain this season has helped out a lot. I used a new natural bug spray this year and found out that some of the plants did not tolerate it well. Some of the peppers, broccoli, peanuts and tomatoes died or got close to dying after being sprayed with it. We had a big problem with potato beetles eating the tomatoes and eggplants, but the spray did much more damage to the plants than the bugs did. So much for a natural alternative.
Garden production has been good overall despite all of our setbacks this year. We have been canning salsa and pickles regularly, freezing squash and eating beans and okra. Our tomato plants look terrible, but are producing more tomatoes and with better quality than we have ever had before. It has been good eating around here lately!
carmen peppers
Eggplant
Peanuts!
Strawberries that were not supposed to bloom this year
Shannon's tiger lily was also not supposed to bloom this year
No comments:
Post a Comment