Bikely map

I woke up at around 7am, fed myself, made a somewhat better fix to the front rack, straightening them out, tightening the U-bolts so they’d hold better, messing with the pannier clips so that they’d be better balanced, and not quite so inclined to throw the racks out of alignment, and refreshing some of the duct tape. Then I packed everything up, and was on my way at around 10:30am.

I don’t remember exactly when it started hurting, but I do remember noticing that the back of my left ankle felt a little painful when I was in Portage la Prairie, looking for a bike shop where I could get a clamp-on mount for my front rack. It may have hurt earlier in the day, but after a month of basically riding all day and sleeping on the ground all night, anything resembling early-morning pain kinda gets filtered out before reaching my consciousness.

I tried adjusting my riding a little so that my right foot was doing more of the pedaling than my left foot, but this produced no reduction in pain. I continued along the Trans-Canada to a point where, because I had confused a pair of checkpoints on my map, I expected the road to bear off from the wind a little, and it didn’t (that was at the next checkpoint, about 9km down the road). Noting that the pain seemed to be ligament pain, and worrying that trying to slog on the rest of the way to Winnipeg might put me at risk of a permanently disabling injury, I swallowed my pride and hitched a ride the rest of the way into town. Although the terrain got really alarmingly flat while I was getting the ride, I wasn’t in much position to stop and take a picture.

The folks giving me a ride dropped my off at the emergency department of the Winnipeg Grace Hospital, and helped me check my panniers with hospital security before locking the bike up outside.

I went in and after a brief wait, saw an emergency physician who verified that there waere no tears, stretches, or other such ligament damage, but there was undoubtedly tendonitis in the Achilles’ tendon. He recommended some rest, prescribed me some naproxen, and suggested that I visit the drop-in sports medicine clinic the next day. I then called around to various warmshowers hosts, but there wasn’t much answering of the phones going on. Eventually, I secured a place to stay for the night, and rode over there, again trying not to use the injured foot.

The following day, realizing just how far out on the edge of town this particular host was, I called a cab to take me to the sports medicine clinic, went through a similar bag-checking/bike-locking procedure, and got myself into the wait to see a sports physician. This second physician said that there was tendonitis, but no damage yet, and told me that it would take about a week to settle down to a safe condition to ride but he’d prescribe me some drugs to help speed that process up a little. I mentioned the naproxen scrip I already had, and he told me to just keep taking that, to ice and elevate the foot 5 times a day for 15-25 minutes, and to avoid using that foot including any exercises that I might get it in my head to try to speed things along further. I then got a hold of a host closer into town, and rode on over, with my left foot hooked over my rear pannier to just hang there, and my right foot cranking away to move me down the street. I had to use a lower gear than I ordinarily would have in such wind/road/traffic conditions, but riding like that was actually surprisingly easy.