Paula Blasi’s off-season faced an unexpected hurdle when she fractured her elbow while doing a grocery run on her bike. Though the injury didn’t stop her from training on her rollers and at the gym, she was back on the bike outside eight days after the crash, as she shared on her YouTube channel.
“I went for a ride in the morning. Everything was fine. And then in the afternoon, I went for a grocery shop, down the street. So I took my bike, just with a stupid thing on the floor I didn't see. Just crashed flew over the bike and laid on fully on my left arm. So all the weight went there and my elbows are strong but not that much,” she said, showing the fracture X-ray in the video.
Her video showed her progress with recovery, and the 23-year-old rider was back training two hours on rollers, 72 hours later. She did adjust her setup to keep her upper body straight.
After four days, Blasi said that she was happy with the progress, as she was seeing “more mobility” and was “already starting to be able to put both hands on the handlebars.”
For Blasi, a silver lining was the fact that it forced her to change her approach to her weight training: “I always like to go way too hard and put way too much weight. With my coach, we're trying to take this moment to really focus on the technique.”
A follow-up X-ray eight days post-injury showed that “the bone is not collapsing, nothing is moved and everything is healing good”, and Blasi was back training on the bike outside, while taking precautions.
“I just tried to go for a couple of hours ride which felt good, not amazing because still my arm is a bit like not super secure and obviously I'm missing a lot of strength now. But I took it super easy in the downhills and tried to find my legs a bit in the climbs.”
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Balsi is not giving up on taking on a cyclo-cross race in December.
“Probably the next video will be my next cyclocross race, which I'm not going to announce yet just because I'm not sure I will be able to race because we need to see how the arm goes and obviously I will not race if I feel I’m not secure on my bike.”
Blasting through the Women's WorldTour peloton this year, Blasi won the Vuelta Femenina and Amstel Gold Race in just her first full season as a pro this year and also finished fifth overall on debut at the Tour de France Femmes. She then went on to sign with the Spanish squad Movistar after breaking her contract with UAE Team L’IMAD.
🦴 An unexpected time of recovery | Paula Blasi - YouTube
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Lyne has been involved in professional cycling for more than 15 years in both news reporting and sports marketing. She founded Podium Insight in 2008, quickly becoming a trusted source for news of the North American professional cycling world. She was the first to successfully use social media to consistently provide timely and live race updates for all fans. She is proud to have covered men's and women's news equally during her tenure at the helm of the site. Her writing has appeared on Cyclingnews and other news sites.
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