How can a flat tire be the best father’s day present that I received this past weekend? My son Levi and I were in Mount Hood, Oregon at the NW Cup downhill mountain bike race this past weekend and towards the end of the first training day he was going too fast into a tight corner, went off the track and hit a tree. As you can see from the pictures he destroyed his front wheel and smashed his helmet visor.
But this wasn’t the biggest problem–the massive Charlie Horse on the top of his quadricep muscle made walking very difficult. Fortunately, we weren’t camping and as soon as we got back to the hotel started alternating hot soaking in epsom salts and ice plus the painful deep muscle massage to speed up the healing process.
The second day of Cat 1/Pro practice stated at 2:00 PM so Levi spent the morning hot soaking, icing and massaging. By the time we got to the course for practice he was still hurting, had difficult walking but once he got on the bike and peddled a bit got loose enough to ride. By the end of the day he felt a bit better about the training runs. Levi was still very sore so we continued the hot soaking/icing and massaging all evening.
The second day after an injury is often the worst so Levi was feeling very sore and was contemplating whether he would race. After lots of light peddling, deep squats and stretching he felt good enough to go for his race day practice run. Despite hobbling as he pushed his bike to the chair lift, Levi felt better on his race run then he expected and decided to race.
I got into position for a great picture and since Levi was the last in his category, I started counting down the riders. There is always a period of anxiety when you wait to see you sons come down the race course so when it was taking longer then expected I started to assume the worst. The race interval was only 60 seconds so when 4-5 minutes passed I started to get very concerned. I started to question my wisdom as a father and was wondering if I should have let Levi ride. He is 19 years of age and is considered an adult but I could have asked him not to race. All the worse case scenarios started going through my mind:
- Did his injury contribute to another crash?
- How badly hurt is he this time?
- Did we just jeopardize the rest of the race season because he raced with an injury?
- How could I let this happen…?
The Mount Hood Nw Cup wasn’t well organize so there were very few race marshals, therefore I wasn’t able to find out if there was an injured rider on the track. When the next category started I knew that if he was injured it wasn’t serious enough to put a hold on the race until the injured ride was removed, but I was still worried.
I raced up about half up the course before I started considering other scenarios. The race course was very rocky and so many riders were getting flats that I started praying that Levi had a flat tire. I turned around and started running back down the hill and when I finally got out of the trees and could see the finish line I saw the Levi waiting for me. As I got closer he started waving. He was standing on his own so I was thinking that even if he did crash he must not be too badly hurt.
As soon as I got close enough Levi came up and gave me a big hug and said happy fathers day. He knew that his flat tire was the best gift that I needed at that very moment. Thanks son!
