It was bound to happen sooner or later. There's not a cyclist, serious or casual, who has never crashed or wiped out. There's not a person who's never crashed on a training ride. At high speed. Going downhill.

Wednesday night it happened to me.

I got separated from the group ride and the one person who was (near as I could tell) following me at what was supposed to have been a regrouping point. I thought I saw one of the group riders disappear back up the hill from which we had come down, and went to follow. My legs were spent, but I decided to tough it out as long as I could -- which turned out to be at about the junction I would have had to go up the steepest part of the ascent. I chose to turn around and go down the nearest descent to the flats on the other side of the main highway, where the ride sponsor was located. The drop down was short and a bit steep, but I thought I'd be able to handle the descent. I kept feathering my brakes to moderate my speed, but I couldn't slow down enough to navigate one of the sharper turns towards the bottom of the hill. The brakes caught a little too far, and the next thing I knew, one of the residents of that street was asking me if I was OK, while two cars were headed downhill towards the same curve that had just caused me to crash.

One thing I've learned through bitter experience is not to immediately get up before going through a mental and visual body-check -- some injuries take a minute or two to become obvious, and can be compounded if one tries to continue riding. I felt injury to my right shoulder and left arm, and a bit of a sting on my right knee where a scrape was bleeding freely. The left forearm had little in the way of broken skin, but showed two rapidly-swelling bumps that indicated I probably needed professional help. By this point, the one resident had a glass of ice water for me to drink -- rather than ice to calm the bruise. One of the oncoming cars had parked and its passenger helped out, and a few of the other neighbors got involved as well.

I'm really surprised how clearheaded I was during the whole incident. I was able to direct the one Good Samaritan to retrieve my cellphone from my tiny saddle bag so I could call The Other Half. I had to direct another how to load a lancet into my lancet device and remove a test strip from the vial so I could make sure I wasn't running excessively high or low (117 mg/dl -- quite reasonable considering I'd just ridden about 20 miles at a fairly high heart rate) -- none had ever seen a glucometer before -- and once I had ice on the visible contusion and we had gotten my knee cleaned up, remembering to use direct pressure to limit any additional bleeding.

Of course it took a while for the Rescue Squad to arrive, check me out, and get me to the nearest emergency room. Once I got there, a nurse took a new set of readings. Thankfully, my systolic pressure had dropped from an elevated 149 to a more normal (if not low for me) 125; my diastolic, however, was still high (having gone from 109 only down to 91). As usual, nobody thinks about blood glucose readings; however, since I am not on any medications that one would expect to cause hypoglycemia, it wasn't as big a deal as it could have been. I was able to check again while waiting for the x-ray technician and I was at a reasonable 97; however, I'd not eaten for over five hours and I'd recently expended about 1000 calories without a recovery meal (or snack). Shortly after, I began shaking as if I was having a bad low -- but it could have easily been a factor of low body temperature (the oral thermometer read 96.7F), or coming off the adrenaline rush of the ride and the shock of the crash. It was only ten minutes since I'd tested, and the reading of 87 was well within the margins of error, but paired with a headache similar to that of a low, I had The Other Half hand me the tube of glucose tabs, of which I downed one while he went off for a blanket.

I was finally released around 10:30 or so and sore and aching, and still had to cook my own dinner once I got home. (The Other Half is cooking-impaired. He foraged for a Chicken Caesar Something while I was off being x-rayed, avoiding the potential of compounding the night's excitement with an episode of Driving While Low.) Finally got to eat around 11:30 (the tacos I'd been planning for all day!). Ended up high (135) turning in for the night, and the expectedly-fitful sleep (ever notice how the most annoying injuries are the ones that don't develop until after you've left the emergency room?), but a more reasonable 105, with most of the swelling somewhat abated, upon waking.

I was advised to stay off the roads until the swelling goes down, so it's probably going to be the indoor trainer (whereI don't have to balance) for the next few days (or the next week). I got lots of encouragement (though no new pledges) for my Tour de Cure ride next month, and I do plan to be putting in some serious road miles between now and then. Meanwhile, check out professional cyclist Levi Leipheimer's description of recovering from a crash, and check out his sponsor RoadID's "interactive" identification products.