Oh Deer!
May 2016. A comfortable 135km group ride ends abruptly around the 38km mark.
Out of the adjacent woodland they came, rushing from behind, two deer took me out with the efficiency of a hired Assassin. A romantic 0.1 seconds of staring into two, deep brown, doughy eyes marked the end of this day in the saddle and the ensuing dive saw the ground Shake, my bones rattle, & I finally rolled to a stop.
The result: one collarbone kicked off, one helmet kicked in, one wheel likewise and one busted up knee.
Conclusion: Those animals can pack a punch in their hind legs.

My Clavicula:

Damage control:
The outlook was bleak. The doctor´s refused to operate, right or wrong I will never know but at the time I did think that my chances of a quicker recovery lay with getting the two pieces of bone re-united with eachother.
My problem was that the bone had split along its length and not just snapped off. This left my right shoulder hanging lower and in turn reduced blood circulation to my arm as the main artery was being pinched, along with the main nerve; Brachial Plexus. My arm would swell up rock hard, change colour to a deep red and sometimes purple. I would lose the use of my hand and fingers till I was forced to lift my arm up and rest it against a wall above my head. The use of a sling only made it worse.

Pain and some more pain:
Since then, the long road back to fitness has been painful, fun, hard work, and educational.
Breaking a collarbone inhibits alot of things you may otherwise take for granted. Putting on a T-shirt? No! Wiping your bottom on the toilet? No! Sitting up in bed un-aided? No! Coughing without your arm feeling as though it just fell on to the floor? No! I assure you, the list is long.

My plans scuppered or?
That this happened just 6 weeks before my 24th Vätternrundan was ”Bloody typical” to put it mildly. Of my 26 previous starts, I had recorded 2 DNFs and 1 DNS. Will I ever get to #25?

In 5 weeks I would have … should have, been starting my 10th Halvvättern. And that’s when I had the idea. There is one bike I could do it on and still protect my shoulder/collarbone. The bike that over 80 cyclists contributed monies to in order to help a good friend and his wife (affected by a stroke) take to the road and enjoy rides together. 2 weeks later and the bike was transfered from Oskarshamn to Norrköping and I had a plan. My first target was Halvvättern. I had the bike, now I needed a stoker to pedal behind me.

Friends, cyclists, countrymen …
Two of my good friends agreed to help me. Stefan on Vätternrundan but first;
Bela on Halvvättern.
After a couple of initial tests and with the approval of Vätternrundan our plan was simple. Just get around.  Normally, Halvvättern is not that difficult for me. But on a bike that weighs 25kgs, with two riders, one sitting , if nothing else then riding up the hill of Omberg was going to be a challenge.
We had a wing man with us to help keep an eye on proceedings; Peter, now I’m not saying Peter is beefy, but you could throw a small minibus at him and when asked if there was any damage you’d get the answer: The driver’s door was buckled and a new windscreen has been ordered. He’s a sort of human Belgian blue!

The plan:
Our plan was to stop in every depot. Take our time, enjoy the ride and just get round.
We did stop in every depot, everyone we passed cheered us on, and our time around the course of 147kms was 5hrs 19 mins. 28,94km/h (excluding stops) That guy behind me pedaled so hard at times I thought the bike was going to fall apart.

Gary, Bela, and some Belgian behind us

One thing that worried me was that my back took a lot of pressure from the bar behind the seat and was now very sore. 150kms was one thing … but 300kms?? I’d have to rethink this…

Footnote:
My second VR. 1991. Again Mauritz and I decided to have another go. Well … it was such good weather last year so …
I wore the same attire … only this time I borrowed a pair of motorcycle gloves from my sister-in-law and put a plastic bag over each foot before sticking them inside my trainers.
Then we proceeded to take on VR #2 in the rain. Rain and wind. The wind was so hard that cycling down towards Omberg I remember still to this day quite vividly the bikes infront of me leaning 15degrees into the wind. It rained for 280 of the 300 kms. I felt like a raisin. Shrivelled up and wasted.
The only problem now was I had to do next year aswell. I mean, who stops on 2?
Nr 3 was now being planned for and I need to buy me some waterproofs!