There is an old rule that I live by. If in doubt, abort. It’s related mainly to when I was diving but is linked to other forms of extreme sports. The logic is simple. If you’re going hiking, climbing, diving or some other dangerous sport and you have some doubt, for any reason, the rational thing to do is to abort.
Turning Around or Aborting The idea is that if you’re 200m from the summit of a hike and you get hit by a hail storm you turn around, despite being so close to the summit.
Yesterday I went back to cycling after breaking my arm and letting it recover. My lower body is fine despite not cycling for a long time but the left arm still feels vulnerable. I could feel it when changing gears and when going over bumps.
As silly as it sounds to wait for weeks before getting back on the bike I see that it was justified. When I tried to shift gears I could feel that the muscles for shifting gears have not entirely recovered.
A few weeks ago I broke my arm while cycling. I was indicating that I was turning right while breaking with my left hand and the brake blocked and the next thing I knew the bike was on top of me. I extricated myself from beneath the bike and dragged it to the side of the road and reached into my bag to get a bottle of coke to help with the shock.