Well, after the Cotswolds weekend we were riding high, pleased with our level of fitness and really looking forward to the weeks ahead...
We gave ourselves a bit of a break this week, took it easy and today got ready to throw ourselves back into training.
We did our usual Saturday morning Body Pump class at Bannatynes and got ready for a 30 mile cycle... Everything was going great - BodyPump was getting easier (at last) and we had a great ride (from Irchester to Wollaston, Great Doddington (up THAT hill), Earls Barton, Castle Ashby, Cogenhoe and Grendon...
Unfortunately it was the road back from Grendon that managed to put a spanner in the works... We were heading back through the lanes towardsWollaston when we rounded a really sharp bend and came across a newly graveled stretch of road...
I rounded the bend first and a bit of gravel got caught in my chain causing my chain to get stuck, my pedals to jam and me and my bike to stop dead at the side of the road. Val rounded the bend literally seconds after me and tried to avoid hitting me - she nearly made it but clipped my back wheel causing her to lose balance and fall into the road, elbow first!!!!
She landed in the middle of the road with her bike on top of her. It was horrible, her elbow was in a dreadful state with a very large gaping jagged cut that was flapping about and bleeding a lot. I shoved her bike to one side and helped her up as quickly as I could. I whipped off my arm warmers and wrapped them around her arm to try and stop the blood, put pressure on that horrible cut and to stop Val from seeing too much of it.
Val was amazing, as I was trying to tie my arm warmers around her arm she kept saying to get the bikes out of the road which I did after I was sure her arm was wrapped up and she was holding her arm above her head. The next job was to flag down some help...
A couple of cars drove straight past but two cars stopped and some really amazing people dropped everything to help.
Peter was in the first car (it was an estate) and he very kindly offered to take us (and our bikes) to hospital - only problem was that he didn't know where he was (he'd just driven up for the day) and there wasn't enough room for all of us and the bikes...
Bring on the second car... Mandy and Steve and their 2 children were on their way back home from Rushden when they came across us. Between Peter, Mandy & Steve we managed to make a plan - Peter took the bikes and Val (who still had her arm in the air) and I went with Mandy, Steve and Co (we led the way)...
What a stressful ride that must have been for our rescuers - poor Val was feeling dreadful trying to keep her arm in the air but Peter chatted to her all the way and I was just babbling all the way desperately trying to look out the back of Steve and Mandy's (my apologies to your kids - we must have been quite a sight all bloodied and chattering 10 to the dozen) car to see if Val had her arm in the air.
Anyway, they got us to the hospital safely (thanks again - don't know what we would have done without you) and we checked in... It always seems to me that when you're in Casualty nobody else looks particularly injured so it was really frustrating to have to wait about an hour to see somebody (Val still had her arm in the air - although by now she was sort of trying to rest it on my shoulder)...
The nurse had a good preliminary look at the damage (I've told Val, I NEVER need to see that deeply inside her EVER again); washed it off a bit and put a temporary dressing on it. Val proudly told her that we'd put a tornakay on her injured arm and the nurse then told us off rather sternly as apparently you're not meant to do that anymore. Well we didn't really, we just tied it tight to try and hold Val's elbow together and to try to stem the flow of blood (almost successfully)...
Anyway, after another hour or so we go into see the doctor who peered at Val's elbow and then inspected her leg (which by now was really swollen and very painful). He didn't do anything, just sent us off to the X-ray department to see if there were any broken bones despite Val's protestations that nothing could be broken as she'd "walked intothe hospital and it hadn't hurt then..." Well, she was right, nothing was broken but it turns out that she had a badly sprained leg...
Finally, Val got her arm stitched up (after having huge doses of anesthetic as the area around her large gaping gash refused to go numb) - 12 stitches in total (very neat and the whole thing now resembles an arrow) and then felt incredibly ill...
She turned a horrible shade of hospital wall beige and her lips went blue, then she got the shakes and started to get very hot and clammy but within about 15 minutes and after the nurse told her that this was perfectly normal (aftershock) she felt a bit better. Shortly afterwards she was feeling well enough to sit up and about 15 minutes later we left the hospital (via our very expensive taxi - we needed to get the biggest one they had so that we could get our bikes in the back).
Never a dull moment with this cycling lark, I tell you!!!!
