I got to go ride at Keystone this weekend with some friends.  While there are a lot of great lift access riding spots in Colorado Keystone still stands above all of them for those of us that love jumps, rocks, roll ins and everything else that makes downhill and freeride so scary…er, I mean fun!

While I want to do a more in depth post on it (if you plan on coming to Colorado in the future it should be on your to-do list) I wanted to share my last run with you…

I probably should have stopped one run earlier. I could tell that I was getting tired but I was having too much fun to stop. On my last run I was finishing up Jam Rock and was hitting a log ride towards the end. The log feeds you into a berm and then into a small double set – nothing too hairy and something I’d ridden a few times already.

I was feeling cocky and look my eyes off the log ride to get ready for the upcoming berm. I could already feel myself carving into the dirt when the bottom dropped out of my world. I slipped my front tire off the log and went down HARD. I slammed my knee into the log and probably hyper-extended my elbow, or at least the pain I feel in it when I straighten it out tells me.

It’s always the ones you don’t see coming that hurt the most. When you know you’re going down you can adjust and get ready for impact. When the mountain decides to reach out and grab you you all you know is you’re on the ground, stuff hurts and you’re not sure exactly what happened.

Oh well, so it goes. As my little girl told me “high five daddy – good job for riding hard”. If you’re going to ride hard you’re going to crash hard. Now I get to hobble into work and train some people. My clients always get a kick out of how I manage to hurt myself on my bike, I’m sure that they’ll love this one.

Hopefully your riding this weekend was less painful…ouch!

-James Wilson-