fractured tibia & fibula

Pretty much the same fracture as me, except mine was a little lower down.

If it makes you feel better, I managed to ride again in four months, and won the UNICON marathon 6 months after breaking my leg, though I was still walking with a limp.

It was my second major injury (you can see the old fixation from the Webber C fracture in my Xray), and at that point almost gave up unicycling.

Glad I didn’t. Don’t let it hold you back!

IMG_6597 small.jpg

Yeah, it’ll heal, sooner than you think you’ll be back to riding, though it’ll take some time to “forget about it”. I broke my leg, wrist, and thumb all on my right side durning a ski vacation at Thanksgiving, was back to skiing at Easter, so four months later.

The hard part was having to cont to wear braces on my ankle and wrist for a couple years to prevent sprains; that was probably more due to tendon damage than the bone breaks.

I’m hoping my clipless unicycling plan doesn’t end up looking like yours :astonished:

So, if you knew that an activity would lead to an injury like this, would you still do that activity?

I would :stuck_out_tongue:

Get well soon! At my age I hate looking at pictures like those:o

Ouch! All the best for a speedy recovery. Pity you don’t remember what actually happened in that ‘bad’ second.

Almost certainly a similar mechanism to mine.

Plant your foot hard on the ground at, say 30 degrees whilst going at 20-30km/hr, and it snaps your tibia in half.

At this stage, I plan to keep riding. But I don’t expect it to be this year.

uniShark, you’re riding again now? How long before you rode again? (I checked the archives and found the post about your ice fall)

Nurse Ben, the KH is of course fine; there might be an extra scratch on the bar ends and one pedal. No gory photos, but there really wasn’t much to see. The bone only stuck out about 1-2mm. The first xray is of the left lateral aspect, where you can see my foot was externally rotated 60 degrees or so from the break. That was really the main thing to notice.

I don’t think riding clipless will cause something like this unless you can’t keep your footing due to reduced grip on the ground during a UPD. I would guess you’re far more likely to sustain damage to your upper body or limbs in the event you can’t unclip quickly enough.

GizmoDuck, I checked the archives and see you had all your hardware removed. Do you still suffer any discomfort? How long until your limp disappeared (assuming it did!)? I’m surprised that you were confident enough to outrun UPDs after just 4 months. I already have a limp on the left due to avascular nechrosis of the femoral head and would rather not have more permanent issues. Come to think of it, I always outrun UPDs landing on my right foot first (not consciously, it just happens that way), so being forced to land on the left may have contributed to this injury…

I did notice stiffness and clicking until I had my plates removed.

Unlike your injury, I didn’t have an tibial rod- they were external plates, so were very close under the skin. I was worried that if I ever bumped them, the skin would split open down to metal. It was also rubbing against my shoe and quite annoying. Best thing ever was getting them out.

In terms of riding- I wasn’t able to train for Unicon on a unicycle because my foot was too stiff and weak for me to balance properly. I didn’t want to fall off and break it again whilst the bone was still remodeling. I did most of my training on a stationary bike trainer, which was great for fitness, but not great for general unicycling skills. Luckily the marathon course wasn’t overly steep/technical. I got back on my uni about 2-3wks before Unicon 13, but still had a limp.

I still noticed a little bit of stiffness in my foot, but after I took up running again last year, I think it loosened up all the scar tissue. I barely notice it any more.

As for UPDs, we usually go at speeds faster than running speed- you wouldn’t try running out a crash on a bike, why try running out a uni crash? Leg injuries don’t seem nearly as common on bikes because you are clipped in. Most falls result in your hands taking the impact, or your thighs resulting in road or gravel rash. On a unicycle, people tend to land on their feet in awkward positions, resulting in ankle or leg fractures, or knee ligament injuries.

Unicyclists learn to ride on smaller wheeled, ungeared unicycles and I guess, with all the falls when learning to ride, you just get into the habit of walking, or, at faster speeds later on, running out. Besides, what’s the alternative? You either run out, or, hit the ground and slide/scrape :slight_smile:

I think the big reason bikers don’t run out of a crash, is cos it’s usually not an option- you straddle a bike, and, very few ways a bike can crash will make it feasible to run out of it.

Whereas with a unicycle, most UPDs result in the rider coming off the seat, while the unicycle just drops down, leaving the riders feet impacting the ground, where, the most obvious thing to do is go with the forward momentum and run out.

I wasn’t offering an option, I was commenting on the different types of injuries between the two.

Broken ankles and tibias/fibulas and knee injuries are more commonplace in unicycling, and broken wrists/forearms/clavicles are relatively more common on bikes.

You tend to lose skin rather than break ankles on a bike.

@IMFalling:

The pics of your legs were the pivotal moment for me to “forget about it” in regards to riding clipless pedals, so thanks :roll_eyes:

With bikes you have more support and control over a crash unless it’s an a$$ over tea kettle affair, in which case anything goes with those.

I have crashed far worse on a bike than on a uni, but my biggest injuries have been on a uni, so I think there may be more propensity for body damage on a uni…

Four months, you should be back riding.

I’m back to riding full difficulty muni. I started back into riding in July, about 7 months after injury. Healing is gradual, at first landing UPD’s on the injured leg was quite uncomfortable, but now I don’t really notice it.

My ankle does still hurt sometimes, and if it gets bad enough I have a tendency to favor it and limp a bit. Too much walking seems to get it, although pedaling makes no difference. Overall pain and limping is getting less and less. However, this morning was in the low 40’s F and was not comfortable. I’m apprehensive about winter. Doc says approx. 50% of patients tolerate keeping in the kind of external plate I’ve got, so we’ll see.

True.

When it comes to broken tibias/legs, does it happen much with non-36-er unicycles?

The instances I’ve read of on this board have all been when coming off Cokers/36-ers: does it happen much, or at all, on smaller wheeled unicycles.

I know of one person who broke their ankle on a 20", but that was playing uni hockey and I think a factor was the contact/presence of other players, and, of course, it wasn’t a broken tibia.

My break was not tibia, but could have been if it had gone just a little differently. I was on a 26" guni in high gear on ice. . . not sure how comparable that is to others. :roll_eyes:

OK, I guess I should have asked if there’d been many/any broken legs/tibias caused by coming off unicycles other than, a 36-er or a guni (geared uni) of any size wheel…?..oh, and of course, giraffe unis :slight_smile:

Basically, I’m just trying to establish if most of those injuries could be avoided by sticking with the more old-school/smaller wheeled unis, when it comes to the activity of ‘just riding’.

Here’s a post about a similar injury. Wheel size is not mentioned, but I get the impression it was not a 36er, nor a geared wheel.

He was doing muni on a boulder-strewn slope, so I’d guess he would be on a 24 or 26", possibly 29?

Sounds like impact was no problem and that the break was caused by leverage from the unicycle as his weight went on it.

UPDs are often nasty when the unicycle ends up underneath you- I’ve come close to such ‘leverage’ incidents a couple of times.

A later post-

indicates he was actually doing a drop off a boulder?

so I’ll add that to the exclusion list i.e.

Has anyone heard of many/any broken legs/tibias caused by coming off unicycles other than, a 36-er or a guni (geared uni) of any size wheel…?..oh, and of course, giraffe unis… and, while doing extreme muni/jumping off boulders? :slight_smile:

And another. Riding down a steep slope, offroad, on a 20".

Thanks for that. Here’s the 1st post of the thread-

That’s sobering- a snapped leg coming off a 20".

From the pics of the hill, it was pretty steep and was a grassy one.

Someone on the thread raised the possibility of the break being caused by unicycle leverage post fall, rather than impact.

I’m wondering, given the look of the hill, whether it might have been a case of the foot sinking into a deep depression, and then the leg getting snapped as his body continued (the exact reason I never, ever, attempt to unicycle over a cattle grid).

But, as is often the case with these injuries, the op doesn’t seem to know exactly what caused the break- so it’s all just guesswork.

Interestingly, the last post on that thread is about a break on a 29-er:

Both have in common the steep downhill, and, obviously, any landing impact will be harder if you come off going downhill.

Keep them coming, this is most informative.

and another break on a 29-er this time