What Was Your Worst Unicycling Injury?

Badly sprained ankle, same ankle, two separate occasions.

“What Was Your Worst Unicycling Injury?”

Probably this:

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I broke my pinky at the Albuquerque muni weekend a few weeks ago. That’s my worst injury so far. It doesn’t slow me down much though.

What does slow my down is knee soreness. This may be worse than the broken finger since it actually prevents me from riding as much as I want to. I’m going to have to take it easy for a while and let my knee calm down.

Photo on 2012-10-20 at 20.55 #2.jpg

One time these mean kids sang the circus song when I rode by.
My feelings got hurt pretty bad.

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Faceplant due to shoe laces

No injuries that required medical attention.

I was REAL lucky the one time my shoe laces got caught up in the crank resulting in a face plant. It was a slow turn while practicing figure 8s on a 20" learner. It was scarey… there is no bailing. Like John Foss, tie your laces.

My Five-Tens now have no laces; I use the elastic laces used by tri-athletes so there’s nothing to come loose.

One time while “not thinking” I bounced my head off the pavement… Fortunately I always wear a helmet and wrist guards. The next fall is always a split second away, and is always unplanned.

Bad Injuries

I broke my leg in three places four years ago. Was Muniing again hard core 3 months later! In addition I have broken my big toe, four fingers my right thumb and cracked a few ribs. I never counted sprains, cuts, bruises or road rashes as being hurt. Pictues of my leg can be seeing in the link below.

Thread of Broken Bones X-rays

Got this one yesterday (it is even more colourful now :)):

I was on a nice morning ride on my KH29 in the beautiful autumn weather. After what should have been the last mount of the ride, I was repositioning my left foot and somehow my right foot slipped and my ankle got stuck between the pedal and crank. I was falling backwards but luckily managed to land on my left foot.

After collecting myself I mounted again and rode the last 1 km home. The funny thing is that although most of the ride had been on dirt roads and trails (in some places covered with a thick carpet of leaves), the accident happened on a smooth bike path! :roll_eyes:

ankle.jpg

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femoral head fracture (where thigh enters hip)

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Woah, talk about screw-ball! :astonished:

Minor really. Pulled a calf muscle in a crash while riding down a tailings pile of a prospect pit.

I did learn one thing: no one has sympathy for unicycle injuries. Hurt yourself jogging or playing tennis, you get,“oh, I’m so sorry, I hope you heal soon.” Hurt yourself unicycling, and it’s “what did you expect?”

PS. Thread title should include “pics not needed, thank you very much.”

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I didn’t think it was really necessary to put pic not needed in the thread title because it was just a question, and I didn’t post a picture in when describing my injury. But pictures are fun to.

Blew the back of my pelvis out 5 weeks ago doing a steep technical decent on my KH24, got another 7 weeks until I can walk properly again!

Ouch! Are you walking with crutches now?

that looks awful!

Ugh! Sorry to hear about your fall, and I hope you recover quickly. I was in a similar spot myself for months with bed, walker, crutches, cane, and pt. Despite the huge frustration of being crippled up, I was able to spend some time on areas of my life I had been neglecting. I also got real enjoyment by actively visualizing some of my favorite rides. Hang in there.

Yea thanks guys. I’m hopping around on crutches and doing intense physio.

It is way too hard to convince people to try unicycling now though. They just don’t believe me anymore when I say it is quite safe!:smiley:

I just had my worst fall on Friday. In a park that borders my university there’s this one incredibly intimidating hill (for an amateur munist like myself). It separates a high path from a low path and is the kind of thing that’s a bit of a pain to walk up. After a couple falls I successfully made it down this once on my KH29 with the cranks in longer holes.

Just last Friday I was muniing around with my cranks in the shorter holes (I didn’t have a wrench of the right size to change them at my dorm) and I stupidly decided I would give the hill a try again. I made it down once before so I figured I should at least try it this time. However, since I had a lot less torque this time (and was already pretty tired) I didn’t try and resist the hill, but instead pedalled faster trying to keep up with my increasing speed. Around half way down I’m probably going faster than I ever have (and certainly faster than I’m comfortable) when I must have hit a rock or something and I’m launching a good 3-5+ feet through the air before landing on some combination of my knee, hip, elbow, and head.

By some stroke of luck (and thanks to the helmet, wrist guards, elbow pads, and knee pads) the only injury I had was a shallow 3" gash along my hip and a generally beaten-up feeling. After lying on the ground stunned for a few minutes I managed to get up and unicycle home.

The hill:

The result:

Lesson learned: Always wear a helmet, one day you might actually need it. Also, know your limits; you’re not invincible.

Jamey Mossengen and I both broke our backs in the same area in Simi Valley within 6 weeks and 2 vertebrae of one another. Needless to say, we now call that Broke Back Mountain! Really just compression fractures so 6 weeks in braces and we were back (no pun intended) in action. No more trying to follow my friends off cliffs anymore though.

I appreciate all of the sobering injury reports here. Adds some balance :wink: and perspective for us mortals learning the sport!

Had my worst UPD to date on Sunday. Out riding antelope island again, I had just gotten through telling my friend in front of me that the best way to get buffalo to move out of the way is to insult them (I am not joking) when I rode through a dip and slammed my wheel into a softball sized rock. Had I been paying attention I could have rolled it fairly easily, but of course I was preoccupied with talking and observing some upcoming buffalo.

The rock stopped my wheel cold, and threw me a few feet in the air, then I promptly landed on the trail where I skidded a good 6 feet through the sand and rock.

I came out alright though. After checking to make sure nothing was broken, I noticed the only scrape I had was on my knee. Not to bad, but my shorts look like a crime scene on the inside of the leg.

Was only wearing a helmet and gloves for protection…

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