How many times have you seen this? Your riding down the street or over a trail and someone else riding their bike rides past you the other way without a helmet?

Like you I've seen countless people, lots of kids, riding around their neighborhoods without helmets. They all make it home just fine and to be honest I grew up in an era when wearing a helmet wasn't cool at all. So are we just being paranoid as adults for wearing helmets and making our own kids wear helmets? I recently had a reason to pause in my thinking about the necessity of helmets. A good friend of mine was in the midst of training for her 3rd Pan-Mass Challenge (www.pmc.org) when a car startled a deer. The deer then ran out in front of her bike and she struck it. It sounds funny at first until you also hear that she hit the deer at full speed and was thrown from her bike, bouncing off the road and into a ditch at over 20 mph.

Two days in the hospital along with multiple X-Rays and scans to try and figure out what was broken as well as how bad her concussion was tells me that it was a very serious accident. One of the first things she said to me was to thank me for adjusting her helmet for her on an earlier training ride we did together. Her doctor told her to be happy she had her helmet on, otherwise she may have ended of with very serious life altering or ending injuries. Now I realize that most people will never have such a random event occur to them. However, the real lesson here is that the unexpected can happen to anyone, on any ride and at any time. So why not give yourself the best chance possible to survive with minimal damage so you can be back in the saddle riding as quickly as possible?

Ride safely and share the fun with everyone you know!

Coach Rob