Just finished railing a techy section of my home trail at high speed. Feeling proud of myself, I relaxed for a couple seconds while rolling a smoother section (at 25mph), before entering the next techy section. I lazily let my right pedal down and hit the only embedded rock in that section of trail. I’d ridden that trail a 100 times, and never even noticed the rock I hit. Anyway, I went down hard on my left knee, and supermanned down the trail until I came to a stop. I popped up, and started taking inventory. My left knee apparently found a sharp rock that I’d also never noticed before, tearing a jagged 3 inch hole below my knee cap. Standing on the trail, I could see my patellar tendon. It was clearly still working. Feeling very little pain, I hopped on the bike and rode back to the trailhead, taking no chances of going down again. Drove to the ER.
I always remember interesting comments at the ER -> We got all the dirt out and closed the wound, but this is going to take time to heal … you’re missing some “material”.
I now own and wear knee pads.