Pedal Strike
It has happened to everyone. The trail narrows, turns get tighter, and an errant rock, stick, or in Dan Booker's case — a root — snags the pedal.
Dan is well known for his style, whip-off skills, and speed. For 2024, Dan has a calendar full of Enduro World Cups, Crankwox races, and one-off events, all of which were set to kick into full gear two weeks after the aforementioned root caught Dan's pedal. And when you're riding at Dan's speed, getting caught up unexpectedly is a bit more consequential than it would be for the average rider.
Find out what happened, and how he recovered, in Dan's own words below.
I’m currently in Queenstown, New Zealand, six weeks after breaking my scaphoid. One that mountain bikers will know all too well for being incredibly slow healing.
I was out on a training ride and clipped my pedal on a root which sent me flying into a bank. Unfortunately it happened two weeks before I was meant to be flying over to Europe.
While being forced to sit out of the first few races has been hard, I’ve been doing my best to make sure I come back even stronger than before my injury.
All the negative aspects of an injury are quite obvious, but when it’s not severe there end up being quite a few silver linings. I find injuries are a good pause in routine to see if there’s anywhere I need to redirect my energy. It’s a good time to take a look at my habits to see what’s helping and what’s hindering. And also a good opportunity to put more focus in to the mental side of being an athlete.
I was also carrying a few other niggles from a big crash I had at the start of the year, and this pause gave me the time to get checked out properly. Lots of physio, X-rays, and a referral for a CT scan showed that one of those niggles ended up being a T8 vertebrae fracture from my crash during Redbull Hardline. While there wasn’t much I needed to do, knowing the injury meant I was able to better manage how I was treating it.
A real strength of mine is that I don’t dwell too much on what has happened. I’m able to process things quickly and start moving forward. In my head I was like “Right, I’ve broken my wrist and my back. I’m not going to make the first World cups. Can I make it back for Hardline? Not quite. Stone king Rally? Possibly? Cool.”
So then I had a new goal. With a goal my focus shifts from what can’t I do to what can I do, and progress begins again.
So what can I do?
RUN
It’s something that is easily replaced by mountain biking in my usual training, but while I couldn’t bike off road I found myself reaching for the runners a lot.
There are endless amazing tracks and trails in my backyard in Queenstown that I hadn’t explored. Using different muscles I found my fitness rapidly increasing and it was great for my mind to be out in the forest and mountains again.
GYM
While the gym has always been a big part of my training, an injury forces you to become more creative. Injuring yourself right before the start of the season when your strength and fitness is peaking hurts. You don’t want to feel like all that hard work you’ve put in is regressing.
Discovering I could still train my upper body through the use of resistance bands strapped to my brace was a great day. Minimizing the areas of my body that would need rehab was only going to speed up my recovery.
Cold Water
I became quite religious with a jump in to the lake to start my morning. The effect that I found on my mind and body from this was awesome. The lake in Queenstown gets absolutely freezing over winter. Leaving a cozy house to go jump into some 8 degree Celsius water first thing in the morning isn’t exactly appealing. But the impact of doing things you don’t want to has a huge benefit on the rest of your life. Plus that dopamine hit is pretty awesome afterwards.
Bike time
I was at a point with my training where I was just about to taper out leading in to the first race of the season. After injuring myself my first race became 10 weeks away which allowed me to restart and build some more base fitness. In amongst the chaos of traveling, changing teams, racing, and some big crashes earlier in the year, I hadn’t built as much base this season as I had liked. I saw this as an opportunity to purely focus on my fitness — I could take the bike set up and skill development out of the picture. I sat down with my coach and we came up with a timeline and plan to get me peaking. This had me spending a lot of time smashing out km’s on the road in my brace.
A great opportunity that came from this was having some time to travel home to Tasmania to see my family and friends. It’s getting a bit more difficult to find the time to get home, so I was super grateful for this. I left with my cup full ready to head away again.
What's Next
I’m making some really good progress and even managed to get out for my first little road ride with no brace, which felt like a massive win. I’ve got another few weeks of rehab here in New Zealand before I fly out to Europe. All things going well my first race will be the Stone King Rally. I’m really excited, this one has been on the bucket list for a while. I can’t wait to get over there to catch up with everyone, get thrown into some racing and enjoy the northern hemisphere summer.
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