The um... eight? Stages of cycling injuries

We're all no doubt familiar with the Kubler-Ross 5 Stages of Grief. These also translate into a number of stages people go through when dealing with change - from denial to acceptance. There is also a lesser known "dislocatedMTBs 8ish Stages of Being Injured", which I shall try to explain to make it slighty less lesser known.

Stage 1: Denial
I'm not broken. I didn't crash that hard. I can talk, move most of my limbs and that's only a small puddle of blood on the floor. No way is my collar bone broken, even though it is sticking out a bit. I'm sure it's just popped out of position, they can pop it back and I'll be fine.

Stage 2: Anger
Bastard collarbone! How dare it break! And as for that accident, how come I'm always the one crashing and breaking things?  Frickin' fate.

Stage 3: Acceptance
OK, so I'm broken. Just rest. Let it heal. Don't plan on doing anything this year, take things as they come. No point thinking about bikes. Except for selling the stupid feckin' things.

Stage 4: Frustration
I canot believe that my carefully planned season, with all those events I've already entered, is out of the window. Here I am lying on the sofa when I've got a perfectly good turbo trainer downstairs and perfectly good legs to make it go round.

Stage 5: Fantasy
Now, I've got a first check-up coming. I'm sure they'll say it's healing well and I can get out of the sling, on the turbo and get training again. I'll only have missed three weeks, that's not so bad. Still leaves a few months to get in shape before the first big event, and it's just extra incentive to train even harder and long.

Stage 6: Testing
Right, no-one is looking. Let's see if  can get on the turbo... hmm not to bad. The physio said it won't do any harm if I wear the sling and take things easy. Right, an easy 180watts. Ah, someone seems to have removed half my lung capacity and replaced my leg muscles with cheese triangles.

Stage 7: Planning
Right, I can do 45min at a time. 12 weeks to 100km event, that mean 3 x 4 week periods, do a base 3 followed by a couple of builds, increase the time and mileage by an hour a week... where's my spreadsheet? And last fitness test results?

Stage 8: Training
This is where is really starts to hurt. And where you realise that it's going to be a whole lot harder than you imagined.

Where am I now? About stage 6.

Hoping to enter Stage 7 on the 9th of March...