Time to put the pedals on

I think that I may have mentioned it a bit before but in April last year (2017) I fell down a hole.

You do get the impression that something serious has happened whilst lying prone on the ground and then being winched, in a stretcher, up a slope by the ambulance crew to the waiting vehicle.

I felt a bit stunned by the accident but looking back this could easily be attributable to shock.

That day in April had started pleasantly enough with an early morning drive out to the coast for my first appointment to inspect a house for a prospective buyer. The fresh air, the required level of concentration for the job and a tried and tested routine must have given me a very false sense of security, so much so that I simply disregarded any possibility of there being unstable ground under my feet.

I have been trained to expect the unexpected but I suppose that in a previously accident free 30 years of working that I was statistically due for one.

A rough calculation suggests that in those three decades I have inspected more than 50,000 properties placing my occupation in, I would say, a very low risk category for injury or worse.

The road to rehabilitation goes on even now, approaching 10 months from the incident.

The first four months were post operative with non-weight bearing and leg brace restrictions. I will admit to finding this time difficult but family, friends and work colleagues kept me upbeat and busy- in mind at least.

There is something disheartening about being given a walking frame and crutches. Although I knew they were temporary I felt old, useless and vulnerable which were all perfectly new experiences for me, well, at least two of those three then.

Gradually and with weekly Physiotherapy sessions at the city hospital I have improved mobility in my damaged leg.

The bringing out of the plastic measuring gauge is a ritualistic part of the 40 minute regime but I have learned that there is an inverse factor where well being and actual degrees of movement are concerned. If I feel weak the gauge records a tangible improvement over the previous reading but after a very productive series of exercises it actually contracts in its opinion. I cannot account for that anomaly.

I have reached a milestone in my recovery quite recently with the ability to turn the pedals in full revolutions on the static bike in the Infirmary Treatment Room.

Everyone who knows me has at one time or another been availed of my cycling stories and modest achievements from a short but active participation in the local amateur racing scene. I am always a happy chappy when pedalling on two wheels and not being able to ride out for the duration of my confinement from injury has been the most difficult thing to manage over the last ten months.

One constant reminder of my absence from cycling is the brand new, unused  Bianchi Road Bike that sits in my garage. It is in the iconic bluey-green colours synonymous with that Italian manufacturer and the purchase was, I can honestly say, the culmination of many, many years of idolisation and wishful thinking.

It had been a long thought process to make the decision to buy one, mainly out of respect for my longstanding road bike that, thanks to a bequest from my Grandfather, I had custom built in 1982.

That machine has and will continue to serve me well and I do feel bad about supplanting it with the new bike but I see it as a sort of precursor to its graceful retirement.

Ironically although some may say, fatefully, I took delivery of the Bianchi on the very day before my accident and it has stood, pedal-less and still part wrapped ever since.

The bottled up excitement of the bike may have been a factor in my fall as the split second of concentration required to nimbly skip over the hole may have been distracted by a day dream exploit of careering about the countryside on the Bianchi. I just cannot say for sure but you never know.

I am just now at a stage of fitness to pedal on my sons indoor bike trainer.

I have started off modestly with a couple of thirty minute spinning sessions but I do have a target date to aim for.

The Tour of Yorkshire cycle race passes close to my home in some 97 days time and I have promised myself a ride out to watch it flash past.

I am, even now, getting quite emotional about the prospect of the resumption of cycling.

I know that I will shed a few tears by the roadside if I do actually achieve this aim. I was a brave soul in not crying when my quad tendon snapped and so I feel I deserve the indulgence of a bit of a weep at this future date.