Well, if you ride long enough and keep pushing your limits, one day it will catch up with you. Three weeks ago, on a balmy Sunday evening at Swinley Forest, it caught up with me big time.

It was a simple training ride, nothing too over the top; off-road efforts with some longer stints thrown in. Swinley Forest is well known to all racers and anyone who has fuelled the winter racing beast will be familiar with the Gorrick venues. And while nothing big and dangerous hides there, a few sketchy little sections do exist.

I would love to say that I was clearing a giant gap and doing a Superman seat grab but I can’t. I wasn’t even going particularly fast, I just washed out in a corner and came down on my right knee. “So what?” I hear you say, and at the time I was thinking the same, but the swelling came on quick enough to persuade me the quickest route home was the best option.

Twenty miles later I rolled into my driveway and spent a good minute trying to dismount. Alarm bells started to ring and my plan to spin out the legs on the way home and flush out the swelling didn’t look so clever. After a few hours of manfully hoping around my wife drove me to A&E, on a bank holiday Sunday evening, when it was warm; oh dear, not the time to be there.
 
Seven long and painful hours later the x-rays confirmed I had cracked the patella all the way across which the specialist casually told me would be about 8-12 weeks recovery time.

I’m sorry – how long??? I had a race in seven days! He smiled and left me with this parting comment: “In seven days? Son, you won’t even be riding in seven weeks and you can wave goodbye to racing again this year.”

So, as amputation wasn’t an option and as the realisation set in that such a stupid little crash had ruled me out of the 2011 season, I sit here after 20 days of not moving my leg and feel robbed.

Anyone who has hobbled into work on a Monday morning dragging a feeble leg behind them or cradling a twisted arm knows the standard comments from people who don’t ride: “Oh, looks nasty, well you’ll be giving up now and taking it easy” or “At your age you should know better and I think it’s time to back off a little bit, take up a safer sport like chess” and “It could have been worse…”

It could have been a lot better, too. So this year is effectively over before it really began. My sponsors are being really good about it but I feel I have let them down and all that cold winter training now seems to have been for nothing.

All cyclists at some point will fall off and the extent to which they injure themselves sometimes comes down to luck – or lack of it. This is my most serious injury so far and yes, it could have been worse, but for the next two months of my life I want people to help me get back on the bike, not try and talk me out of it.

When I return I need to be fast enough so when bad luck tries to catch up with me he can’t – and that way I’ll stay just one bike length ahead of any more trouble. I hope.