A cyclist from Canada who sustained shattered bones in his right forearm after he was shot while on his bike is back in the saddle – including riding in a 600km endurance event that qualifies him to take part in Paris-Brest-Paris next year.
According to the newspaper The Province, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are still looking for the person who shot Craig Premack in the incident near Spences Bridge at around 1am on 1 June this year.
Officers say the 55-year-old cyclist was lucky no to be killed when he was shot as he headed back towards Vancouver while taking part in a 600km rider organised by BC Randonneur cycling club.
With the bullet having passed through his arm, shattering the bone, Premack managed to stem the bleeding by improvising a tourniquet out of a pair of cycling shorts.
However, he says he will not let what happened to him affect him mentally, telling the newspaper: “If I got super uptight about it, it would be almost like he beat me another way.
“You don’t want to dwell on it. You want to do your best to get over it.”
Some tasks are too difficult for Premack to undertake because they hurt too much due to his injuries, and he said of his qualification ride for Paris-Brest-Paris – undertaken in August, just two months after being shot – “that was an exercise in pain.”
He is making a gradual return to work as a machinist, but with the work involving pulling wrenches, he is in continual pain.
“It’s not like something where I forget about it and a couple of hours later I’ll go, ‘Oh, that hurts’,” he explained.
“It’s something that hurts just about every minute I’m at work. I’m just going to tough it out.”
Premack, who plays the piano, said his doctor, also a bike rider, had told him he hoped his arm would fully heal eventually.
“He never made any promises. He said, ‘Do what you can, push it as much as you want.’ He said even though the bone was damaged so badly, the bones healed. Pulling on wrenches and that sort of thing, I’m not going to damage it.
“All I’m going to do is build strength. If it hurts, you’re not damaging it,” he added.
there is no law saying that you must leave 1.5 m when passing a cyclist, there is only a "should" in the Highway Code...
I hate to get all "wing mirror"-y, but I was under the impression that the big area of glass at the front of a car is the windscreen. Not the big...
Just to redress the balance slightly re white van drivers, one time I was at the side of the road fixing a mechanical when a WVD stopped and...
Find someone else who has already bought one over here, and ask to borrow their receipt.
Honestly, can't people just realise that different things work for different people...
Stop building bike lanes and just close a couple of car lanes. Much cheaper and more useful. Cars don't use the left lane anyway. They are too...
There should be a disclaimer at the head of this report:...
Absolutely this, riders gonna crash it is a race. And tempering any aspect of that competitiveness would detract from the race but developing...
I came to say the opposite, I always liked Giro shoes but they're insanely narrow. I hope they did change the fit.
Frame weight is about a hundred grams less than a CAAD 12 disc, which can be picked up cheap these days on gumtree. Heck, get the CAAD12 non disc...