Turnstiles

The plan was that I'd work my team's races Monday and Tuesday, race Wednesday and Thursday and take Friday easy in preparation for the Burnham Supercrit.

Thanks to my impatience at the Loyola Red Line station, those plans have been thrown around a bit. On Tuesday, I decided to take the train to work because I was tired from a hard weekend of riding. As I was walking in the alleyway from my apartment to the El station, I heard the announcement saying, "Attention customers: an inbound train, toward the Loop, will be arriving shortly." I hate waiting for trains. I like sitting in my seat, facing the back of the train so that I can read my NYT and ponder my existence while heading in to work.

That's all I wanted Tuesday, but what I got was a whole bunch of pain.

Since I could hear the announcement, that meant that a train had just left the Morse station and would be closing in on Loyola in seconds. So I started running. I entered into the station, headed to the last turnstile because the others were full with people, took my wallet out, hit it against the pad (Chicago Card with the chip, natch), heard the beep, and kicked against the turnstile with my left leg. Hard.

Can you see where this is going?

The beep I heard was not my beep, but someone else's. My turnstile was immovable because the card hadn't registered with the meter, and basically I slammed into a 3" stainless steel bar with just about as much force as I could muster. Because I was in a hurry, see? It felt as if my left thigh had just been hit with a baseball bat, which in a way, it was. It hurt, bad.

I got through though after re-running my card and ran up the stairs and got on the train. At least that went well. Got downtown and my leg was already stiffening up so I walked around for a bit and went inside, got my coffee, and got to work for a bit.

About an hour later, I got up to get some water and my leg just about buckled underneath me. I remember thinking, "That ain't right." Took some ibuprofen, got a bag of ice and sat back down.

I'm going to skip ahead a bit to about 6:00 PM.

6:00 PM, I'm hobbling around like my leg is broken, my thigh is throbbing and painful to the touch, and if I lean backward, the pain in the quad nearly buckles me. I nonetheless keep on hobbling because there's a race to run, 2 of 5. People both feel sorry for me and laugh at me when I tell them the circumstances of my crippling. Dan threatens to kick me in the leg and I just about cry.

After the race, Vince gives me, Joe and Jenn rides home, and it takes me a good thirty seconds to get into his car because I can't bend my leg. The climb up into my apartment is no better -- I stomp up one-legged, balanced over the banister.

Yesterday, I woke up and it was a little better, today, even more so. I haven't been on the bike since Monday and likely I won't be able to ride until tomorrow, or more likely, Saturday. Saturday's the day of the race in Beloit and I'm doing the 3/4. It's tough hanging onto the crowd when feeling good -- feeling like Pete Rose (bless his heart) has clobbered your quad with a Louisville Slugger is another matter entirely. Gotta say, though, I'll race with heart and soul (if'n I do.)