by 
Last Tuesday, the coughing and hacking continued, all night long according to Dominic. My DR called in 5 days of Prednisone for the inflammation. By Wednesday she decided to call in some antibiotics. I had suspected bronchitis. My inhalers weren’t working. Thursday I went to Hot Yoga hoping the 110 degree room would help my lungs. The stretching felt good.
Friday, I went to preview the Gun Club Cyclocross course, and I rode for 2 hours. I felt really good, aside from the coughing. I got in about 8 laps of a rippin’ fun course. The ground was moist and the air was HOT. I felt pretty good but deep down knew I shouldn’t race on Sunday. Though I was committed to working the race and had a free entry….
Fast forward 2 days to this morning at 2am.
Dominic: There is NO way you are racing, you haven’t stopped coughing all night!
Me: Shut up.
Dominic: Honey please listen to me.
I went back to sleep. The alarm went off at 6:30am and I fed the dogs and loaded up my gear. I left Dominic home in bed sleeping.
I arrived early for volunteer stuff, and then headed over to my car to get ready. I rode a lap before the first race started and then rode my trainer for a solid 20 minutes.
I watched my buddy Charles finish, the one armed cyclist, who raced in DC colors. Rad dude, very inspirational.
They started staging the women. There were 3xs the women then just 2 years ago. I was in the 2nd to last row. I had a lot of women to get around. We rode into the woods, my favorite part of the course. Then onto some gravel into a flat section of grass.
A double sandpit, and then a bunch of twisty turns in the grass and a clusterfuck of women who were getting off their bikes in tight sections. It was frustrating because I knew I could ride these sections.
Then into the woods on some gravely trails, a bridge, a rad creek crossing, with a monster hill to follow. I jumped off my bike and proceeded to run the hill, but it was tight and I had a bunch of women in front of me, walking, dragging ass up the hill. I was so frustrated, I yelled at them.
“It’s a RUN up ladies, not a walk!”.
At the top of the hill I passed a few of them and rode on.
I was feeling good, passed a few more women, and then after some more twists and turns, we made a hard left into a killer hill I was able to ride in practice, but all the girls were off the bikes, running it. So I did too. I came around the corner and onto a gravel turn, and BAM!
I was down. Chick behind me crashes on top of me. She was hurt. Our bikes were stuck together. My derailleur was stuck on a spoke. I got up, got the chick’s bike out of the way, and then I heard them calling for a medic. I looked down at my knee and saw a chunk of skin gone, blood was coming out, dripping down my legs. The pain was agonizing, but once I got my bike going, I hopped back on and started pedaling.
I finished the lap, only the pain was fucking thumping and I couldn’t pedal with my left leg. I ducked under the tape near my car and DNF’d. There was a girl I know who races with the elite 1/2’s who ran for ice. Her Mom pulled a big ass pebble out of my knee and there a lot of blood. It hurt SO bad. I wrapped it up and hobbled over to my car.
In tears, I drove myself to the ER for stitches.
It swelled up and was thumping pretty good.
They were more concerned about my cough. They gave me an asthma breathing treatment, x-rayed my lungs and knee. I have bronchitis, and no real damage to the knee except a big contusion. I feel like maybe I shouldn’t have gone to the ER, I only got 6 stitches, and a big fat ass bill coming my way. I need to HTFU more.
Check out the Ohio Valley CX website for more on the series.
by 
uh, i’m thinking you can’t get harder than you already are.
hell, i skip races with a little sniffle or runny nose.
did you have fun?
Your knee will heal much faster with the stitches and be less likely to get infected because they got it cleaned out. Both of my knees have similar scars (6 and 7 stitches) from crashes during mtb races. Maybe this will force you to take it easy for a couple of weeks, so that you can recover from the bronchitis.
That Raleigh logo is, of course, styled after the Rainier beer logo— which was brewed here in Seattle for like twice as long as since white men sailed into Puget Sound. Okay, they might have been Spanish, is that considered white, like compared to the Duwamish who were living her at the time? Then G. Heilmann sold the brand down the river and I think they make it in L.A. now and truck it all the way back. We live in a strange world. Anyway, cool thermos.
I got enough damned sutures in me to knit a fucking necktie. And I figure as long as I can keep the undertaker off the back, I’m fast enough.
@bobjin, no, didn’t have fun. numbing meds are worn off. this fucker is thumping bad. holy shit.
Get Your man out to get you a bag of frozen peas, put dry cloth on knee, defrost peas on knee. Make your man stir fry some onions, add a couple of spoonfulls of instant potato mash, add unfrozen peas with a bit of liquid (water, beer or white wine) stir, when mushy add more liquid, salt and pepper. Serve in a mug. Voilà: Knee Pea Soup.
Wonderful, I was told that when you has a vasectomy you used a bag of frozen peas because there were no sharp edges
if you are running and wrassleing bikes and other ladies on a cross corse for a dnf and 6 stitches with bronchitis, you do not need to htfu, you are hard already. about all i can do with bronchitis is crawl from the bed to the couch, maybe i need to htfu
This post tells all of us except judi that we need to harden the fuck up.
Now to judi. Take a rest and recover properly. You earned it.
Your blood has the consistency of wine. Are you Jesus?
It also looked like you gave some punk asses a knee to the forehead. Adjust your story as necessary…hehe…
Judi — HTFU’s should and must be punctuated by SUAFR’s (Shut Up and F’ing Rest!) on a regular basis. Other the HTFU’s begin to run out of steam.
You’re a goddess of a hardwoman who has proven her mettle. Give yourself a break. Sit down on the sofa and let the dogs go goofy-love-crazy all over your lap. Make some comfort food (mine is often noodles and cottage cheese this time of year) and lay in a stack of your favorite trashy reading. Let your miraculous body do the miraculous work of healing it’s hard-wired to do, and stop flagellating yourself. DNF’s happen. They’re better than DNS’s. Glad you weren’t seriously hurt and will live to kick ass another day.
Big hugs –B
Been following your last couple of posts. Take two weeks off please. You wont race well again this season if you don’t. Now, Im off to HTFU!
thought you were off drugs? caffiene, steriod inhalers, pain pills, antibiotics…ironic isnt it, cycling is supposed to be something that is good for your body. stop the race registration, sign up for yoga.
I’m with Wyatt. Rest is good. Geek out on bike parts on the interwebs.
I’m not really sure you should go to hot yoga when you have a bronchial infection. I really wouldn’t want to be next to someone coughing that shit up in a hot moist room. Might as well just smear you infection on them. You shoulda stayed home.
I was expecting this kind of Gun Club.
Damn video won’t embed, but you know, the band. The Gun Club, great stuff.
If ERs had their way, people would not be able to buy:
butterfly stitches,
betadine iodine solution,
large gauze wrapping, and tape
from drug stores. You already can’t buy sutures in US but you can in Canada. The drug stores still sell the first aid essentials, and I carry, in a small seat pack, tied up in plastic: a small glass tincture bottle filled with iodine, a few large bandages, some gauze, half roll of medical tape, and a tiny pair of scissors. There is also a sanitized green scrubbie in there. If I were you, and wanted to finish that race, and had this simple, inexpensive equipment, I would have went aside and immediately sanitized my wound with the iodine, scrubbed it out, and wrapped it with gauze, and rode on. Same thing I do out in the sticks where there ain’t no ER around. No infection can happen with immediate wound cleaning. You have to really get in there and it hurts like hell, alright (but not as much as a medical bill)
100 proof whiskey works, too. If the bleeding stops after butterfly closures are applied, then some wounds don’t need sutures. Clean wounds immediately close up and start to heal, and pain goes away some when the contaminants are gone. Hospitals want you to think you can’t do this shit yourself. I beg to differ and have been OK without them.
Sounds like your lung problems are considerably worse than getting cut up a little – but it’s a tough call whether hard exercise is making it worse or better. I think it has a lot to do with what you expect and what you believe. We all have incredible power if we unleash it.
Cyclocross being nearly above aerobic threshold for the entire time is probably harder on one’s body than sitting in a lawn chair smoking a menthol. This wont be understood prob, but the free radical/lactic acid creation of that kind of effort and the load it puts on the entire system of the body is pretty much counterproductive to any kind of “good health”, nevermind doing it while already suffocating from some kind of lung infection.
Another thing, everyboby knows superglue? the liquid Cyanoacrylate version? It’s been (non officially) used since vietnam to make non definitive sutures. I’ve tried it, and it works!
Just pour iodine (or other to clean wound (cycling team use cloth pads to make sure no grit stays in) then close wound by the lip.
Have not yet had the chance to test on bullet wounds.
Hey Judi, I hope that heals up soon and gives you a chance to recover from the bronchitis. Look after yourself.
Pingback: I fell off. - Drunkcyclist.com | Drunkcyclist.com
Hello there, just became aware of your weblog via Google, and found that it is truly informative. I’m gonna be careful for brussels. I will appreciate should you continue this in future. A lot of other folks shall be benefited out of your writing. Cheers!