My plan was to spend 4 weeks in Utah, training at altitude to prepare for the HooDoo 300 race. I set off from Florida with my car fully loaded, with two bikes and almost everything else bar the kitchen sink. I love road trips. It feels a bit like Ultra distance cycling minus the pain. Hours in your own head. Ever changing views to entertain you while you keep focused on the road and all around you. So off I went. Four days of new roads, scenes and even a couple of new US states I had never visited before.
After a long, beautiful and steady four day drive I finally arrived in Park City Utah.
Once settled in I set up my trainer in the open garage and had a ride, looking out at lots of beautiful mountains and a lake, waiting until Deirdre arrived before I went out on the roads. This gave me a chance to adjust to the altitude, tweak my bikes without the risk of a mechanical a long way from the house with nobody to call.
Deirdre arrived by plane into Salt Lake City and got settled in our altitude training camp. We found a couple of local Starbucks, did a “big shop” for food and had a great Thai dinner in Park city; this was going to be a fun few weeks. After talking about how we were going to organize my race and her SAG duties, we did a recon of the local area on the Friday and found 2 perfect routes to ride. I’d spent a relaxed week getting used to being at 6,500 ft of altitude and was itching to get out onto the roads.
I was off, on my first 40-mile loop. I left the house on my now spotlessly clean Pinarello F5 “Betty Blue” and tootled up the road to check my bike sensors were all working properly. Everything seemed fine and I made a U-turn to start out. The bike and I went down. It was almost a stationary fall (bit of sand on road and not paying attention) onto my left side. I laughed, got up quickly hoping nobody had seen the old Lycra clad cyclist perform this comical stunt. I felt a weird feeling in my right groin and so hobbled the 100 yards back to house, thinking it was nothing much and would pass in a few minutes. I began to think it might be a small dislocation as I lay down in the house and tried moving my leg around. Deirdre suggested we go to the local clinic to have it checked out. Park City, because of the Winter Olympics and its world class skiing, has some of the best orthopedic center’s which was fortunate for me now. The x-ray at a specialist clinic showed it wasn’t nothing – I had two fractures of the right pelvis. Strange I thought as I fell on my left side. We then were sent to the hospital and Olympic center for a scan, this confirmed the breaks but luckily there was little displacement and so no surgery would be required.
I was very disappointed and frustrated, as you could imagine, that I was going to be off the bike for some time to recover, heal and then rehab. I was really looking forward to the HooDoo and Natchez rides, as both are on unbelievably beautiful routes. Now they were both truly not even a possibility.
Well at least I could rest for a week or so in stunning Park City before we would make the long drive back home.
Two days later I got some great news. I had been accepted to be on the Tour 21 team for 2026. Slightly ironic that I break my pelvis at the same time as I’m accepted on to The Tour 21, 2006 team of 25 riders, riding all 21 stages of the 2026 Tour de France one week ahead of the professional peloton.
Here I was struggling around our Utah rental on a walking frame, thinking of riding arguably the toughest bike race route in less than a years’ time. Not exactly what I had imagined a few days earlier. Deirdre drove us home over the next four days which I know for sure wasn’t something she had imagined either. We had a lot of laughs on the long trip back to Florida and managed most of the obstacles it presented pretty well. Getting me and two bikes in and out of the car each night and morning became routine, if not a little challenging. We did manage to miss any major traffic and to be honest had great weather all the way home. I think we were both pretty relieved though when we finally got to Hobe Sound.
What do people say about “the best laid plans”?
Now to rehab, get back on the bike and start my long cycling adventure from Florida to Paris.