Show me your best bruises! (not for the squeamish)

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Mine have become the stuff of legend. A couple of months ago I even asked to be tested for Von Willebrand. It's a form of hemophilia that is equally common in men and women. It is genetic, but my mom was adopted and we don't know her entire genetic history...who knows what could be lurking in our bloodlines. My mom and siblings and I all bruise REALLY easily (my hubby likes to joke that I bruise if someone sneezes on me). I tested negative, but I'm still a freak. Here are some photos from yesterday's CX race (there were more crashes at this one race than at ALL the combined Fall series races with FAR more riders. Next time I ride this course I'm using my mtn. bike. The worst was a stretch of twisty, sandy single-track).



My muscles actually hurt more than my bruises. I fell at least 3x and a couple of those falls were really hard. I feel like I'd feel after a minor fender-bender. My shoulders really ached when I got out of bed this AM.

[Owlie]

OUCH.
I don't have a picture, but I had a massive one (or a hematoma) on my upper thigh from when I fainted due to dehydration in the school bookstore in 2007. I don't know what I hit on the way down, but it took a month to heal and left a divot in the muscle for a long while afterward...

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Oh, yeah...I expect these will leave some marks that last a while. I did a snowy cyclocross race back in mid-Feb. There was one stretch where I was trying to get around a kid who was weaving all over...and of course he wove towards me as I did so, forcing me into a tree. That left a knot on my shin that only seems to have disappeared completely maybe in the past few weeks. I still have a shadow of a hematoma I got last Fall mountain biking, too.

As a teenager I was thrown from a snowmobile onto an icy lake (my friend piloting the snowmobile lost control on the ice and the 2 of us went flying as the snowmobile flipped onto its side--I'm just thankful my leg didn't end up under it) and that hematoma on my hip left a shadow for at least a year. That was fun, since I was a cheerleader and every time I'd do a round-off the world got to see my dinner plate-sized bruise!

[Anelia]

A broken nose and face bruises.
I also have had a whole on one side of my abs and it hurt a lot more than the broken nose. I didn't want to make the surgeon who did the stitches nervous by making pictures of the wound. Anyway, he did a lousy job and after 2 weeks when we had to remove the stitches, the wound was not healed but infected and another surgeon had to clean it again (it hurt!). The whole recovery took me about a month and I was not able to ride a bike during this period. Not to mention the first two weeks were awfully painful. The whole was punched by my brake lever and it was about 2 inches deep. I was lucky that I didn't have any internal organs damaged.

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Oh...OW!!! What happened?! That infection would have almost been the scariest part. I'm glad that didn't get any worse.

[jobob]

Four days after my very first mtn bike ride ever, with SadieKate.

Yeah, I bruise easily.

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Egads...now THOSE are some SERIOUS bruises!!! How did you manage that? What did you land on and how fast?

[jobob]

Basically, I'm a klutz. I certainly wasn't going fast, I just skidded and tipped over & landed on some rocks on the side of the trail.

Heh, and then there was the time not too long after that when LeeBob & I went mtn biking with maillotpois. Lee took the brunt of that one. Though I managed a couple of nifty little falls as well. Guess I'm just not well suited to mtn biking.