Carnage

As a general rule, I try not to crash on my mountain bike very much.  Not only does it hurt a lot, but oftentimes I am riding by myself with no one to call 9-1-1 if I really got hurt.  However, there has been a lot of crashing going on lately, and these recent biffs have caused me to ponder the topic of carnage.

I just recently crashed two or three times while riding Chicopee Woods, but neither of them were really that bad, and I came out fairly unscathed.

A couple days later, though, my wife had a picture-perfect endo and bashed her knee on a massive root.  It did not look pretty!  It's a week later, and she has a really attractive bruise still gracing the side of her knee cap.

Carnage: crashing, getting busted up, bleeding, and lots and lots of pain.  Carnage is an intrinsic part of the sport of mountain biking.  We try to avoid it at all costs, but it happens anyway. 

Not all crashes result in blood and pain. Some are relatively injury free, like the ones I had at Chicopee.  Even when a rider escapes a biff without injury, it is still an important learning experience.  He learns what he did wrong, and hopefully how to remedy the situation next time. The fact that the rider crashed also means that he was pushing his limits on the bike.  Carnage and crashing are about as necessary in the sport of mountain biking as are a pair of wheels. 

Here is a phrase to live by: "If you're not crashing, you're not learning."

Hopefully, you can survive the crashes without much damage.
But real carnage is eventually inevitable.  Be prepared!

My chain ring ripped the snot out of my leg as I landed a jump. That was about 7 months ago, and I still have the scars.