Bodies are strange and amazing and surprising and annoying. November, 1st 2025, the front wheel of my Unit X, pushed and I slid out at Brown's Ranch, on mile 38 of a 40 mile ride. Tired? Maybe, Caught daydreaming? Possibly. Not to big of a deal, yes the road rash would be annoying, but heal up with little impedance on my riding. But NO, the handlebar dug into the desert and drove my right elbow into my lower rib and cracked it. Plenty of pain and suffering, but it to was healing. A week of walks, and another of canal path rides and I was back on the mountain bike for some easy single track rides for a week, with the usual canal rides thrown in, before I got on the single speed again. I was lifting kegs at work again and I was soon back to my regular riding with little rib issues. Fast forward to the Thursday June 11th. I was trying to recover from arguably the hardest three days of riding, relative to my fitness and age(I am Old but pretty fit) I have ever had. Five days at elevation in Flagstaff Arizona. The bookends were easy ride, but the other three books were War and Peace, Dune and Of Mice and Men, were pretty tough group rides, two where single speed. I had an eye towards doing the AES ASpen Asphyxiation the next Saturday the 13th. I was so toasted, was taking it easy. I had been working on tight hip flexors with Planks and Glute bridges and needed to lighten that up switching to a few windmills, unweighted and kneeling lightly weighted and some light Yoga and some foam rolling. All very reasonable or so I thought. Almost as an afterthought I foam rolled my inner thighs and while doing this my ribcage in on the floor and as it rocked, I felt a pop and the old adhesions that formed to protect the rib, back in November, opened up. It was a little sore, but my easy MTB ride on Friday in Flagstaff was fine and even during the grueling AES 28 mile 4000ft Aspen Asphyxiation, the rib only smarted a few times a big drop here and there. But I felt it in the rib the following Tuesday on steeps of Hawes, Alpe Duez. But you know just a little sore. Canal ride was fine and the usually brutal Arizona Single Speed Funday Sunday only made the rib smart a few times. But over this week the general level of soreness did increase. Sunday night into Monday it started to approach the pain back from November. So will I be Disciplined and stay off the trail for awhile and just do LSD on the canal paths or will I give in and hit the trails too soon?
