recovering from clavicle break

[achurch]

went down wed night in crit, broken in 2 places, had surgery yesterday
no concussion, no lung or organ damage.

What's the recovery?
-(love to hear from drs and patients)

Timing for:
Trainer with a raised bar and spinning
trainer in regular position
efforts outside
racing again

Recs about working with physio versus osteo

other thoughts...

oh yeah, I'm on the good side of 40 (which means over) and like racing but it does not define my life...

[MattTuck]

Fabian, is that you?


Don't have any advice, but atleast you're in good company. maybe his blog or twitter has some info. He broke it at Tour of Flanders, April 1. so if he says anything specific, you can benchmark it to that date. of course, he's a demigod, and you're a mere mortal....


Get well soon :)

[FlashUNC]

Take your time with it. Listen to the docs.

[gone]

Sorry to hear about the break and good luck healing. This is one of those "listen to your body" things. The fact is that after a week or so you're not going to do a whole lot of damage unless you fall off again so it's really only a question of how much discomfort you can tolerate. Since you didn't have a collapsed lung I'd say spinning with upright bars within 3-5 days.

I've got some experience here since I've done 'em both. The difference though is that both times I had broken ribs and pneumothorax (collapsed lung) to add to the pleasure so my healing rate was probably different than yours will be.

The "cleanest" break I did with the least damage happened on 12/8. I did a short ride (10 miles) around the neighborhood on 12/30 which, according to my log "really hurt" but did a 14 mile ride the next day. My ride schedule after that looks like:

1/1: 20 mi
1/3: 24 mi
1/4: 32 mi
1/7: 10 mi
1/10: 10 mi
1/11: 10 mi
1/12: 15 mi
1/14: 23 mi

and so on. My pace was pretty slow (17 MPH or so avg). By 1/29 I'd done a 45 mile ride with 1800 feet of climbing at 18.6 and pretty much ramped up distance and pace from there.

[tannhauser]

Depends:

How bad your break is.
Your tolerance for pain.

Mine wasn't too bad, was on a suspended mtb in 5 days riding one-handed but that was pushing it.

Just sitting on a trainer w/raised bars, any sort of bike, gets the circulation going, healing you faster and getting yourself out of any potentially mopey situation.

As far as racing - you can't know the timeline.

[1centaur]

I had never broken a bone and never had surgery until I broke my collar bone and had a plate and 10 screws put in last year. Knowing what I know now I'd probably push myself earlier, but:

On the trainer (normal bars) in 10 days and on the bike in 21 days, the main limitation being pain and wondering if I might be damaging anything. Had I known it was JUST pain I would have done stuff sooner. The main difference between trainer and road bike was that on the trainer I could take my hand off the bar and ride one-or-no handed any time I wanted to relieve the pain, while on the road I needed to control the bike for road hazards even if hitting a patch of torn up and ready to be repaved road that pounded me like a jackhammer (good times).

My pain was greater because they waited a week to do surgery and my ligaments stiffened up from holding my arm at my side - to this day those ligaments give me more discomfort than the break area.

I did not do PT - I did tons of motion exercises at home with very light weights.

[flickwet]

Went riding 3-4 days after the surgery , one handed it on 1x1 poetic huh? ended up pulling the screws out on the outboard portion of the break so it looked like the end of a spoon was trying to poke out of my shoulder. let it heal that way cuz I didn't know it wasn't supposed to look like that. Ortho was freaked out when he saw it, Second surgery to remove the plate, weird looking shoulder now, but I can throw a ball a 1/4 of a mile.

[rustychisel]

Depends:

How bad your break is.
Your tolerance for pain.

Mine wasn't too bad, was on a suspended mtb in 5 days riding one-handed but that was pushing it.

Just sitting on a trainer w/raised bars, any sort of bike, gets the circulation going, healing you faster and getting yourself out of any potentially mopey situation.

As far as racing - you can't know the timeline.


This. Unless it's a minor break with little displacement you're up for a 6~7~8 week layoff from the road. Listen to your body, you'll know when it's time.

[palincss]

This. Unless it's a minor break with little displacement you're up for a 6~7~8 week layoff from the road. Listen to your body, you'll know when it's time.

Oh if mine had only been "a 6~7~8 week layoff"! In my case, the break didn't heal fully until almost a year had passed. I couldn't lay off that long, started riding again after 4 or 5 months, then had the doctor bitch me out that it was all my fault it didn't heal because I was out riding. As if that wasn't enough, I tripped while carrying my roof rack to the shed and in falling gave myself a rotator cuff injury.

Broken collar bones are trivial only if you're a pre-teen.

[regularguy412]

Mine was in three pieces after my break. Was in figure-8 sling for 8 weeks and had to sleep sitting upright in the recliner. The good part was, I was back on the trainer after about 10 days. Couldn't hold the bars and had to spin sitting up. I'm sure it helped the healing process. Even after 8 weeks, I was a bit leery of racing. Did gradually get back into training and eventually went back into racing. To this day, though, that shoulder joint is just a bit looser than my other one. That could also be somewhat attributed to the fact that I had also separated that shoulder in race crash a couple of years prior to the clavicle break. My poor left side seems to always get the worst end of the deal.

Just go by what you feel you can take and don't try to over do it or come back too fast.

Mike in AR:beer:

[achurch]

All flat, mostly on the seaway here which is smooth pavement and no cars.

Did nothing for 5 days, on the computrainer every other day until day 10, then on it 4 out of 5 days until today, when I was back on the road. Felt soooo good to actually be moving!

Have xrays again in two weeks to check on how the bone is healing.