The best-laid eggs of geese and men#
Wed, 15 Mar 2006 12:00:00 +0000
Today was supposed to be another session at the go-kart track and then a video analysis session in which each skater skates behind the mirror van while Sebastian gives them advice on what they're doing right and wrong. For me the programe was slightly altered at the last minute: morning at the go-kart track, coach trip to the road where the video was being done, some skating up and down while waiting for my turn (an opportunity to practice some slalom and parallel turning to the left, which almost seems to be coming together) then an unscheduled visit to the local hospital.
I was dialled in. I was focused. I was cruising happily along the straight flat well-surfaced road with no other traffic (actually it's a slight decline, but it's a long shallow one) concentrating on carving every stride nice and early and - I don't know how fast I was going, but it felt fast. I felt great. Then I saw the people from my group that I was looking for, started to think about slowing down, and suddenly I'm not sure what happened but points of contact with the road included my right thigh (scratches), right wrist (slightly sore, but no lasting damage), right knee (graze, big hole in tights), back (rip in jacket), left elbow (luckily this was cushioned by the compeed I put on it after Tuesday's fall) and face (cut lip, nosebleed, broken tooth). Sonja from Experts in Speed applied emergency first aid to the lip, then took me into town where the nice man in the hospital cleaned it up further and changed the dressing, told me I didn't need stitches, and there was nothing he could do for the tooth that my own dentist couldn't do anyway.
I feel so stupid. Really. It wasn't even as if I slipped on anything or hit something: I just ... fell over. I'm also gutted to have missed the video van - although clearly "don't fall over so much" is probably the best advice anyone can give me about my skating at the moment and it doesn't need an expert in speed to tell me that.
What I don't feel much of is pain. The tooth is a bit tender: I think I lost about a third of it. The knee smarts a bit. My hip hurts when I move it, though - probably the cumulative effect of Tuesday's fall, this morning's fall, and this afternoon's crash. At times like these I think I should revise my goals for the year:
Perhaps I'm beating myself up too much. I don't know.
[ Edit: I was told afterwards that what actually happened is that I stood up to snowplough a bit, and one of my skates decided to grip the tarmac quite a lot harder than the other. So, surface imperfection is an almost-valid excuse, but don't try that again from that speed. The slope probably meant I was going quite a lot faster than I realised ]