Riding Tiger Mtn on Sat 5/12 with a friend, a wet slimy tree root suddenly torqued my front wheel around and I hit the ground hard, banged up but all body parts still firmly attached. I continued riding, but every bump triggered sharp pain in my left shoulder, so we got off the trail and rode out along the (less bumpy) gravel fire road. That meant climbing back up to the summit again before we could go back down. The good news: we got a tough cardio workout with 4,000′ of climbing in 15 miles. The bad news: got some x-rays on Mon 5/14 and found out my left humerus is fractured. I can still ride but will stick to the machines in the gym for a few weeks.

The break is a crack at the upper end of the humerus where the ball-shaped top end tapers to the straight part of the bone. The doc says it will probably heal on its own, but there’s some chance the shoulder muscles might pull it out of alignment, in which case it will require surgery to realign the bone.

I’m getting another x-ray soon to see which way this is going.

4 years later… I don’t know why I didn’t put up the pictures. They’re quite interesting, showing how fast bones can knit and heal. Bone injuries can heal faster than ligaments. In 13 days the bone had closed and knitted the crack, though it took several more weeks to fully heal.

Day 2 – cracked

Day 13 – crack is closed and knitted!