the pulled rib muscle ride

Big Sky day, a photo by rOcKeTdOgUk on Flickr.

Ben and I headed for Clent today, went the hard way, over the top of the Waseleys and them straight up to Nimmings wood. we feasted on Bacom butties and then headed off into the woods, we found some great fast, quite technical trails twisting through the trees and hit the valley bottom, then we followed out instinct and some barely there trails back to the top of the hill. then following the start of and old favourite trail we branched off following a vague bit of singletrack which turned into a great twisty, off camber root-fest, some of it naturally bermed before it twisted between two narrowly spaced trees down a steep drop off which had me right off the back of the saddle. it then traversed the contour before turning sharp left down some very steep and unevenly dropped wooden steps. unable to stop and check them first because of my momentum i plunged down, this was fine for the first few but then the drop between each step got higher and the lips further out. i felt my rib muscles over stretch as i leaned right back over the saddle, i couldn't let go of the bars as this would have ended in a crash, so i hung on until the steps were cleared. i didn't impact my ribs with anything (i've done that before, whacking them with the saddle, so know how painful that is) so it can only be a pull. very painful though and not helped by the fact i still have a cough! i know from past experience of this type of injury that today's pain will be a lot worse tomorrow and the proceeding days as the bruising comes out properly. to cap it off i got caught in a rainstorm in the last 3 miles of the ride and got soaked. but actually it was a great ride despite all this and the newly named "bruised rib" trail was an excellent find.
ride 149
25 miles
total 2865
commute 775