A long time away from biking

Another few months have passed so here's a quick update.

I hope at some point to cover 2008 in a bit more detail, including Mountain Mayhem, Sleepless In The Saddle, more of the 2008 NPS XC series and other topics, but for now I'm trying to look forwards and enjoy after an injury hit 2008.

I was in Shropshire for round 4 of the 2008 NPS at Eastridge, taking photos etc. as usual for http://www.xcracer.com and was riding the race course to find some good viewing spots. The local conditions were amongst the most mixed I've seen for an XC event, with rocks, roots and mud all together for a change, plus a number of fallen trees which had been incorporated into the lap.

To cut a long story short, I ran out of a combination of riding skill, front wheel grip and arm strength over one of the fallen trees/logs and went over the handlebars, winding myself badly and banging my wrist. I was in no fit state to continue riding the course so walked the remainder, taking a few photos en route, and went to get checked out by the Extreme Medics doctors, who diagnosed a sprained wrist and bruised ribs.

Still in a bit of pain 10 days later, I went to A&E to get the wrist looked at in more detail, and it turned out I had actually fractured the scaphoid bone in my left (dominant) hand. That destroyed my plans to race Dusk 'til Dawn, and also meant surgery to insert a titanium pin into the bone to improve the chances of successful healing.

24 weeks after I broke it,the bone has healed but I'm still undergoing physiotherapy to strengthen the wrist, and am still not allowed to ride, which is incredibly frustrating. Still, in the hope I make a full recovery, I'm already thinking of Mountain Mayhem and SITS, plus may race at Wild Boar 24 too.

In the meantime, I've been experimenting a little with video hosting sites, and have decided that Vimeo is a better option than YouTube, as although it doesn't get the same number of hits, the resulting video quality is far higher and less grainy.

I re-used my original footage from the 2007 NPS events at Margam and Sherwood Pines to produce some videos for the 2009 British Mountain Bike XC series, and uploaded them to Vimeo. I think they work quite well. See more at http://www.britishxc.com