Fear of Falling: Conquered?

I've always been afraid of falling. Well getting hurt really, or worse. It may have started in my childhood when I wanted to go ice skating at the really cool, indoor ice rink in a mall during a Christmas time vacation in Atlanta. Since I had never skated before and my parents didn't have the skating ability to take me out on the rink, the answer was, "but you may fall and someone may run over your fingers.". Funny how you remember exact moments like that.

Somehow Barb never allowed these parent admonitions to settle in her brain. Perhaps her response was the exact opposite - "so what, I'll show you I can do anything!". As her recent blog exclaimed, pavement and cornfields be damned! Well, not to be outdone my younger sister, I've given the falling thing a try.

Of course I didn't set out to fall on my bike last Saturday - especially since I was flying to London that night. In fact, this time with my bike shoes firmly clamped in the pedals, I made an extra effort to remember to take them out long before approaching an intersection so as to avoid the dancing encounter with a car like I had the last time.

Falls always seem to happen when you least expect it - like I described in my skiing blog post. And so it was that I was humming along at a speed of about 15mph on the paved rails-to-trails bike trail near Mahopac, NY when my front tire went slightly off the pavement in a spot where there was a large dropping edge to the grass. Before I knew it, the left side of my body hit the pavement.

Fortunately since I'm keeping up with Mike these days he wasn't a mile ahead of me. I yelled to him to turn back around as I quickly assessed my injuries, and told him I was ok. The road rash on my elbow and hands was not pleasant, and I felt a big bruise forming on my hip, but I got up, shook off the fall, cleaned my wounds with my water/gatorade mixture and mounted my bike to ride another 8 miles and finish the 21 mile ride. And, then I ran another 2 miles in the 90 degree heat, ignoring the slight pain in the hip.

This was quite a different outcome from a long ago rollerblading fall with about the same amount of road rash - I felt so nauseous that I took off my skates and walked home. Triathlon training is definitely toughing me up. I don't know if I will ever conquer my fear of falling, but perhaps this is a start. Then again, Barb had to go and post that picture of her husband's post accident bike...