Owch

It was raining heavily as I rode in to work this morning, and on the last downhill stretch on the road before I reached the bike path, my back wheel struck something and the bike careened out beneath me. For a few seconds I swayed out of control and then down I went at 30kph. If I hadn't been riding with one unbalanced pannier it probably wouldn't have happened, but on a wet and slippery road, I had no chance. I went sprawling forward, landing on my side, skinning my knee quite spectacularly. Luckily the rain had numbed my legs, so I didn't really feel the pain and was back on the bike immediately, cursing a little and feeling a little shaken up, but not too bad. Focussing on the hot shower and first aid kit that awaited me at work, I managed to ride out the remaining 15k. What concerned me more than the road rash on my hip and knee was a sharp pain on one of my ribs. I think it was only a glancing blow, but it hurts to walk and I'm definitely not going to try to run with it. Breathing is fine though, so I think it'll only be a light bruise that should hopefully clear up by the Melbourne Marathon on 11th Oct.

I'm less worried now about an enforced taper than I was before last Saturday. I hadn't been doing any running because my achilles was still bothering me, but I forced myself out for an 18ker round Jells Park with the Melb Marathon training squad. It was a struggle, but I made it and was very happy with myself for pushing through with depleted energy stores (I'd packed a little bag of dates for that purpose, but left them in the car) and a right hip flexor that was giving me grief. Achilles felt ok though, so that's a relief:)

Plan for the next few days is to just stick to cycling and maybe get on the wind trainer without using the arms. I'll keep up the volume for the rest of the week and then really taper off big time to let the legs recover.