Tonight was not a good night..

A couple friends and I were doing one of our regular Wednesday night training sessions and we decided to go try out a different venue which is great for training, but it’s very dark at night and does not have lights in most parts.

My front light ran out of battery halfway through the ride, and I decided to just push on since I thought I could still see fairly okay. This was obviously not a good idea as you can see from the following pictures. One second I was going at my hard interval pace, and the next second I felt an impact and was flying sideways through the air to be greeted by the cold and hard pavement.

I found out that the cause was one of many large metal light reflectors that were sticking out of the middle of the road.. Normally these aren’t so bad if you hit them, but these ones looked to be designed to really mess you up if you hit one of them, whether you are riding in a car or on a bike..

I instantly had a double flat on impact, some broken spokes and ruined handlebar tape, but luckily that was it for the damage on my road bike.

My helmet was also pretty badly cracked. Definitely goes to show why you should always wear a helmet. They really do save lives.

As far as my body goes, I had the normal road rash (fortunately only on my right side), ruined one of my favorite cycling kits, and had a really sore thumb (on my left side) which turned out to be broken. I also experienced my first ever concussion, which was quite a frightening experience.

At first, when I tried to get up and walk off the road, my vision would quickly get blurry and go dark. Thankfully, I had my friends with me to help take care of me and get me home.

One of my friends called a taxi to our location, and I was able to get home that way. Never thought I’d see the day where I finish a ride home in a taxi, but there’s a first for everything I guess.

Back to work Thursday morning. Uggh