Yesterday morning I had my injuries checked out by a fellow cyclist who is a wound care doctor. He said that they all look good and clean. I guess all the painful scrubbing they did on Saturday night was worth it! My elbow is also a lot less swollen than it was. It’s just a bit discolored from the bruising.

The worst part about the injuries now is getting a good night’s sleep. I’ve been waking up a lot because it’s hard to get comfortable with all of the road rash decorating my body. My morning temp and resting HR have also been elevated these last couple of days and I still wake up groggy in the morning, even without taking any meds. I think all these symptoms are due to the healing process. I still took the last couple of days completely off, as I had planned. I want to make sure all my energy goes into healing.

In hindsight, doing the Morning After Crit only 14 hours after the crash was probably not the best thing to do. I thought I could channel my disappointment due to the Twilight crash into a good performance. But I learned that anger isn’t a great motivator for endurance events—it only lasted one lap, then I was confronted with the harsh reality that my legs had nothing to give and my body was battered.