Sophomore Eli Husted, who was featured in the first issue of the 2017-2018 Shield after winning first place at the Amateur Road National Cyclist Championship the past two summers, suffered a severe injury on March 18 while training for the events he will compete in next summer.

With his face down, Husted crashed into a parked car causing a deep laceration on his arm and his face and injuries to his right knee. 

“I was in the middle of an interval and I had my head down on my bike,” Husted said. “I felt like something was coming up, and I was right. As I put my head up I was about 10 feet away from a parked car. I put my arms up at just the right time to block my face. … The impact of the collision shattered the back windshield of the car and dented the entire left side of the car.” 

After crashing, Husted remembers laying in the road and hearing a car door slam shut, and someone yelling “Call 911!” Luckily, Husted’s father was riding alongside him and was able to get him medical help immediately.

“I remember the whole thing actually, and I remember looking at my arm after I crashed, and it was just terrible,” Husted said on March 27. “I didn’t really want to look at it until yesterday, like I couldn’t without getting sick.”

He split his right arm open, and got many stitches, the exact number he said he didn’t want to know. Husted spent three days in the hospital and two days at home recovering from his injuries.

“I got the stitches removed from my face two days ago [March 26] and my legs have been hurting a lot too because of the impact,” Husted said. “I split my bike into four pieces which was incredible, and my helmet didn’t actually do very much believe it or not, but it was all pretty scary.” 

Not even a week after he was released from the hospital, Husted was eager to get back on his bike. He rode his bike up and down the street, slowly getting back to his normal self. Only a week after, Husted rode 60 miles, with 3,500 feet of vertical climbing, training for an upcoming race.

“That bike ride was really tough,” Husted said. “But I’m looking forward to getting back into the more training aspect of riding my bike, and hopefully I can race next week at the Dry Race Series.”

A week after he got his stitches out of his face, Husted got his ace bandage and stitches removed from his arm. His elbow is still restricted a bit, but Husted said his knee is feeling a lot better. Instead of using this incident as a defeat, Husted hopes to continue his cycling career after his recovery and considers this as a lesson learned.

“It was my fault and I needed to learn my lesson,” Husted said. “And this was one way of doing so.”

Even though his injury put a dent in his training for a couple weeks, Husted is still hopeful to be racing in his next couple of upcoming races.

Husted has plans to compete at Nationals, where he will aim for his third national title in a row and the Junior tour of Ireland.

“Of course had I not crashed I would have been training through the two weeks that I was not training,” Husted said. “Yes, it slows me down a little bit, but not too bad.”

Husted will continue to race, but never again with his face down.

“I guess when I had ridden my bike previously, I’d look down, or look away, or look at something else when I was riding just because I felt comfortable,” Husted said. “But after this, I just notice how much I look away, and it’s encouraged me to keep my head up and always look out for everything.”