I had just added elbow protection to my list of saftey gear and was feeling invincible when I UPD’d onto a rocky trail. My elbows are fine and I think they did get hit. My left knee is sore. I was wearing roach armor - they really don’t protect knees too well. My right big toe got slammed some how. I’ve been wearing BMX shoes which are pretty soft, but grip the pedals well. I hope this heals quickly.
Maybe I should be wearing toe armor.
-Eric
i went for about a year with at least one of my pinky toes broken. they just wouldn’t finish healing with breaking first
Eric,
I have broken or badly sprained 3 toes. Actually I did the same middle toe twice, both times by a UPD where as I swung my foot forward to catch myself it nailed a rock embedded in the ground. My big toe I did when I made a high speed jump off a ledge and the uni inexplicably stopped at the edge (scared I guess). I flew a good 20 feet distance and 3 foot drop in perfect superman form, landing on my hands, elbows, and toes.
In all three cases my toes turned black and hurt like hell for a long time. Everytime I do it I say I am not going to ride again until I armor my toes. But then I forget.
You Austin guys seem to be having a run of injuries. Be carefuller.
Scott
Maybe mine’s not broke then. It is swolen, but not discolored. I can bend it with not much pain, but I can’t put weight on it.
-Eric
I did that to my toe as well… when I stubbed it on my couch while walking barefoot across my room. Not the most glorious injury, but it did hurt.
My grandma broke her toe when a cat got frightened and jumped with all its force directed at her toe.
Without bloodshed or extreme discoloration, or a cast, sympathy is hard to come by. I didn’t have mine x-rayed because I learned over my years of injuries that with toes and ribs, the treatment is the same whether it is broken or sprained: Don’t do what hurts.
Maybe this is a good time to practice one-foot riding.
You don’t have Ankle Biters, do you? I just got some but haven’t ridden with them yet. They are very minimal, but should protect the ankle bone well, as many have said. I was hoping they would hold my Roach armor up where it needs to be to keep my knees covered, but I don’t think they are tall enough. Next time I will get custom sized Roaches.
Scott
Yeah, I’ve got some wrecked toe history as well. First trauma came years ago when a misplaced martial arts kick resulted in toe meeting wall… very ouch!
Last month when I was MUni’ing I UPD’ed in a rather unspectular fashion but did end up in ‘push up’ position resulting in said long ago injured toe bending back more than it can actually manage. Again, very ouch!
Foot specialist recommended a foot splint which is really a carbon fibre plate that is shaped to support the damaged toe and is sandwhiched in an insole which then can be put in riding shoes.
Wow, now this device works like a hot damn to protect my toe as it will allow some bend but not to the degree that would cause the toe to be redamaged. It was pricey but I am pretty stoked about the prevention to further injury that this offers.
Back from my month of summer holiday travels I am looking forward to getting back to MUni and using my new carbon fibre toe armour. … now if I could just hurry up and get over my jet lag… .
cheers,
Erin
Erin said:
“I was wearing roach armor - they really don’t protect knees too well.”
Were you wearing dual slalom roaches or full DH? Dual slalom roach pads have almost no knee protection. Full DH have a layer of plastic over the knee.
I sprained my to in the most unglaumorus-I can’t even spell it-fashion. I was jumproping and someone made me laugh. I tripped on the rope and landed with all my weight on my big toe.
That kept me off stilts for a while, and changed my wheelwalking style pretty drastically, albeit temporarily.
ouch
i’ll join the ‘i broke my toe once’ club i broke my big toe doing taekwondo and my little toe it hurts :S
They are the Roach DH leg Armor available from unicycle.com. I banged my knee pretty hard. I’m sure without the leg armor it would’ve been alot worse, but more padding would be nice. Now I’m considering getting seperate knee pads and shin guards. Or is there a way to just not fall like a sack of potatoes? The trails we have here in Austin are filled with rocky sections. They are usually alot of fun to try and ride through. Usually when I can’t, I land on my feet. What scares me is the possibility of bashing my face on a rock. I hate to even mention it. I guess the risk is lower because I can break the fall with my arms and legs.
Man, I got to stop thinking about what can go wrong.
-Eric
sure are a lot of people with jobs out there. I’ve got broken toe stories, but find myself w/ too much to do to share them.
Austin Rocks!!!(sure hurt more than other locales)
We’re planning lots of uni fun the first week in February during JuggleFest.
Mark your calendars now!
If you have elbow pads and arm pads on, just roll. Don’t try to run out of the fall, just roll. The survival rate amongst people who roll out of falls, compared to people who try to slide or just stop is generally much higher. When I was first learning to unicycle they first made me learn to fall before they let me learn to ride. Saved me many a sprained wrists and bruised knees. My skull and brain are very thankful that I learned to roll before I attempted to learn to ride, too.
I think that depends on the terrain. Rolling on big pointy rocks is worse than a broken toe.
I ride on slightly smaller than fist sized gravel and very loose dust, and i can tell you that landing like a sack of bricks on gravel is painful. If you have a choice between rolling out of a fall and falling so that you’re in a push up position, you should roll because pointy rocks to the palms hurt. It’s all about rider preferance, though. As I begin riding harder and harder terrain, I’m beginning to stop before I ride a section where I think I’ll fall and plan how I’ll ride the section and how I’ll fall. I much prefer to run out of an UPD than roll, but sometimes it’s safer to roll. I’m starting to decide that the best idea though is to handle terrain and falls on a case by case basis, and not even attempt to make a blanketing statement as to how one should fall, because every fall’s different.
My slightly more than 2 cents.
When I don’t get to run out of a UPD, I never get the option of rolling or flopping. It just happens very quickly.
-Eric
I’ve fallen badly once on that trail, but I just bruised my wrist and skinned my elbow. I saw this very rocky section ahead, and started to walk it because it looked too hard for me. It had a lot of rocks that would catch your pedals and send you flying. Then I asked myself, would Scott W. or Eric ride this section? Of course they would! So I went back to the start of the section, got back on the Uni and started riding.
My tire got wedged into some rocks and it stopped dead just as my forward pedal was at the 11 o’clock position while I was pushing hard on it. I went down on my hands, elbows, and knees. I closed my mouth in anticipation of hitting my teeth on the rocks.
I’ve been lucky to not have any other bad falls there. I often come away from that trail bruised and exhausted. It’s probably one of the best Muni trails in Austin.
I don’t think that is a good plan, Doug. Eric and I each have an unenviable list of injuries. Better just use your own judgement.
Scott
Re: Big toe might be broke
On Wed, 20 Aug 2003 20:31:18 -0500, onefiftyfour
<onefiftyfour.shmot@timelimit.unicyclist.com> wrote:
>Maybe I should be wearing toe armor.
It’s funny that you mention that (not that you hurt your toe though).
I used to think that all the padding I normally use is helmet,
shin/knee and wrist/gloves, but in fact I do have toe armour as well
because I usually ride with safety shoes which have a steel insert at
the toe end.
I go a sort of ok speed on my Coker… - Roger Davies
i normaly dont wear protection. on the rides i have been doing with eric and Aj but since this has all happened i have come to think that protection is good cuz waching other pple go rilling down a ricky imbankment just makes me cring. I have yet to break any thing thoe i have scraped my hands a few times. Brused my thumb in uni hocky and one time managed to dismount backwards but the hil i was on was to dusty so i lost my footing and landed on a nice sharp rock that staped perty deep in to my palm. At which point the was promtly filled with dirt and gravel from the continued sliding down the hill. Had the doc check that one she said with deep woonds that you need ot keep the woond open so as to heal from the inside to push out all the crap.
Lastly if you ride off rode make shure you have your tetnus(spelling) shot cuz if you cut your self on rocks and dirt thatis where that stuff lives
Nate
Re: Re: Big toe might be broke
I saw some steel toed shoes yesterday that I was considering. They were not as heavy as I was thinking they would be. They make steel-toed shoes that look like running shoes. I like to have my riding shoes with soles that are flat and treadless. That’s why I was using bmx shoes. I wonder if someone makes steel-toed bmx shoes.
-Eric