This has been extensively edited and was republished on March 1, 2026

For the longest time, I’d thought of the events below in terms of the crash itself. And to be sure there was a lot to think about; a series of life-threatening injuries which had the potential, in the very early days, of leaving me blind, with permanent brain damage, or in the worst case, dead. While those things thankfully didn’t come to pass, I’ve come to realize that most of the time recovering has really been about the acquired Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) I sustained.

I am not a particularly pedantic person, but I avoid the word accident when referring to the crash that nearly took my life. To me, that makes it sound like it was just bad luck. I maintain that had the driver been paying attention to his surroundings enough to be operating a motor vehicle, he would have seen me and it never would have happened.

Crash

I went out for a bit of a joyride on the afternoon of Sunday, April 14th, 2024. I planned to be out for an hour or two at most. Beyond that it was a pretty unremarkable day – clear and cool for spring in Vancouver.

I was heading east on Rumble Street in southwest Burnaby, when a driver heading west turned left across my path. As he did so, he hit me at roughly 50km/hr, according to the police report. It was fast enough to throw me into the windshield, and up over the roof of the car. I landed on the pavement about ten feet behind it. I remember the car coming to a stop diagonally, pointing away from me. I also remember everything slowing down in the split-second of the crash. As the driver took my bike out from under me and I flew into the windshield, it was like an out-of-body experience. The crunch of my body hitting glass, the thud of it collapsing on the pavement.

The only thing I can recall from the impact is the driver exclaiming repeatedly that he never saw me – on an absolutely clear day with excellent visibility (much like the day in the photos above). And before anyone assumes anything, I was wearing a white helmet, and dressed in a very visible bright red cycling jersey. I vaguely remember the paramedics cutting off my cycling kit, but everything else, until days later in the hospital, is a blur. I wouldn’t really say I was “awake” until about a week after the crash. There are moments in the days following that seem like delusion or fever dream, though I do remember once being taken to a hospital downtown when they were planning a procedure they didn’t end up doing.

Somehow, I managed to provide my wife’s cell number to a bystander, who called, and followed that up with a text message when she couldn’t reach my wife. In a strange turn of events, the bystander also provided contact info for the driver. Thinking he was a witness, my wife sent him a text asking what he saw, to which he responded that he was actually the driver who hit me.

To this day I remain somewhat incredulous that he didn’t suffer so much as a reprimand for nearly ending me. Some weeks after the crash, when I finally gave a statement to the constable assigned to my case, she informed us that charging the driver would be up to us, as if we knew the available options. The police were also ultimately no help providing a copy of the police file from the crash.

Injuries

Polytrauma is a medical term used to describe a patient with multiple traumatic injuries to different body regions or organ systems, where at least one of those injuries, or the combination of them, is life-threatening.

When I arrived at Royal Columbian Emergency I had a lot of internal and external bleeding. The most obvious injuries were a massive gash just below my left elbow and additional gashes at my outer left knee and on my outer left thigh. I have scars from all of them, but the real souvenir is about five inches long, extending down my left forearm from my elbow. It is the invisible damage, though, that has dominated my life in the time since. Somewhat miraculously, aside from those mentioned above, I sustained no lower body injuries.

Once they finished stitching me up, I had become non-responsive, indicating that I’d probably had one or more strokes, and when imaging confirmed it, the neurologist recommended they put a stent in my right carotid artery to reduce the risk of clots and further strokes. With the main concern being potential permanent brain damage, my time in emergency surgery was fraught with stress for my family. It didn’t help that my platelet count was over five thousand at this time, when “normal” is four hundred or so.

It’s probably worth mentioning at this point that I was also intubated for breathing, had chest and stomach tubes to drain blood, had a feeding tube to get calories into me during the first part of my time in the trauma unit (I dropped about 30 lbs at my skinniest point), had a catheter for voiding my bladder, and had a PICC line throughout my trauma unit stay so the multiple needles I got were easier to handle. In addition to the scars I’ve already mentioned, I’ve got one of roughly a foot in length running down my abdomen, another that meets that one perpendicular to it (where they removed my spleen), and a little 2″ one on my ribs, from my chest drainage tube. I wish my wife had taken a photo of me, because apparently I looked like a member of the Borg Collective from Star Trek.

I have no idea how many exactly, but I broke several ribs and they ended up the least of my concerns. I barely noticed them during my hospital stay, but the heavy pain medication I was on may have had something to do with that. 

In the hospital trauma ward in the days following the crash, I had significant visual deficits, and there was some talk in the first couple days of me possibly losing my sight. Most notably I had a condition called left side neglect, where those afflicted tend to miss a lot of things on the left side of their field of vision. This improved fairly quickly, and by the time of my August ophthalmology follow-up, I had actually been cleared to drive again.

Recovery

I spent three weeks in Royal Columbian Hospital, before being transferred for another five, to GF Strong, a rehab hospital that specializes in Spinal Cord and Traumatic Brain Injuries. In total I was in hospital for eight weeks.

By far the strokes and resulting TBI had the largest immediate impact on my life. There isn’t an area I can think of which wasn’t affected, often significantly. My right hand was very uncoordinated, stiff and slow. It could best be described as near-useless upon my release from hospital. 

I did five weeks each of physio, occupational and speech therapy during my GF Strong stay, and was released home in mid-June. I mostly rested for the next couple months to get strong enough for more intense community physio, though I began three months of fairly intense hand therapy immediately. I had frequent insurance calls and medical follow-up meetings during this time as well. In July 2024, I began my community therapy journey.

My right hand has thankfully shown decent improvement over time. I needed to re-learn to use it, but being right-handed, I have also used it for everything throughout my recovery, even when it was uncooperative in the extreme in the early days. I spilled relentlessly, broke a lot of things, and was generally a shaky mess. The hand therapy, and pure stubbornness were a big help in getting it back on track. Being a drummer also proved fortuitous, as near-daily playing for well over the first year turned out to be excellent hand therapy. General right hand use is now largely indistinguishable from before the crash, but fine motor skills and dexterity still elude me to some degree. Typing is passable, but slow. Printing, not so much, but I persevere with practice.

The other area where limb coordination was a significant problem was running, and  to a lesser degree, walking. I have suffered more than a few bloody knees en route to becoming more stable on my feet. On some of my overnight stays at home while still at GF Strong, I was lucky if I could wobble through 2 km at a slow jog, tipping and tripping due to dizziness and balance issues. I recall phoning my wife for a rescue pickup with blood streaming down my legs on more than one occasion. One time when walking to the car from a medical appointment, I tripped on some uneven pavement, did a somersault and hurt my shoulder.

In July 2024 I began six months of vestibular physiotherapy and, in September 2024, six months of cognitive speech therapy. Balance and dizziness issues are exceedingly common amongst TBI victims, and I’ve been no exception. I have never had exceptional balance, but I became a spinny dizziness machine after the crash, a fact to which the examples above will attest. 

Back in the early days in the trauma unit, my wife says I was limited to one-word responses and most often stared into space. By the time I was transferred to GF Strong after three weeks, I no longer spaced out, but still had problems with things like labelling, categorization and word finding, often stumbling for terms that came easily to me before the crash. When first released from hospital, I constantly forgot where I put things and misremembered even the most basic details of almost everything. I suffered from persistent brain fog, something very common to people with a TBI. I couldn’t read well or parse the hands on a clock face, and I became confused easily. 

To aid my short-term memory, I developed the habit of keeping all the stuff I use daily in the same backpack by the door. I also got in the habit of putting absolutely everything in my calendar. I had a lot of appointments, particularly for insurers, healthcare practitioners, and therapy sessions. These deficits have improved a great deal during my recovery, and are getting pretty close to normal, though I know I still have occasional TBI moments. 

Long term memories have, thankfully, remained fully intact. Not remembering our recent Australian or Europe trips would have been truly depressing. 

I credit the six months of cognitive speech therapy for helping memory and cognition immensely. My Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP) helped me develop strategies for working around my cognitive deficits and we worked extensively on memory and recall. In the last part of my cognitive speech therapy, we began doing return-to-work planning and exercises, and I’d even received a 100% remote medical accommodation. However, a combination of higher education financial troubles, an offer of nearly a year’s salary, and some institutional inertia in putting my graduated return to work into effect, meant I ultimately accepted an early retirement offer.

I have been very happy with my running and cycling progress throughout my physio. When I first got out of hospital I wondered if my running days were behind me, and while progress has been slow to be sure, the wobbly 2k slow jogs have morphed into 18k runs as of spring 2026. As for cycling, which started with very short rides on protected infrastructure around home, I’m now up to 80k on the open road, and decent trainer workouts. I haven’t even needed to place a rescue call with my wife while cycling, though my Garmin incident alert did give her a scare when I failed to negotiate a curb properly and gave myself a good patch of road rash. Being able to run, cycle and read again were actually the only goals I set for myself when I began therapy at GF Strong. I have read almost daily since the crash.

Remains

I’ve made good progress. My family and friends are shocked at how my recovery has progressed. To look at me, there are no outward signs of what I’ve been through, but it’s nowhere near all positive.

As a result of losing my spleen, I have become immunocompromised, have to be more cautious in crowded places, and have developed a sizable incisional hernia that I await a repair date for, more than a year after diagnosis. I also had five new vaccines as a result, with two of them requiring multiple doses and boosters in 2029. 

In general, as you might guess after dealing with so much physical trauma, I have more pain, bordering on chronic in places. I experience tightness in some of the muscles in my back and shoulders, and my abdomen feels odd all the time, as the sensation of a six centimetre hole with my transverse colon protruding (and risk of strangulation) affects everything I do. A sizable area in my left pectoral and under my left arm has also permanently lost sensation, and the hernia repair carries the risk of more.

Light sensitivity has been a constant struggle, and remains so to this day. I wear sunglasses all the time when I’m outside, aside from a very small comfort zone, where daylight doesn’t force me to. Overcast gloom is now, sadly, my friend. 

 I still have occasional episodes of brain fog and TBI “moments.” I used to be a very linear, logical person, and my thinking is often more jumbled now. My ability to do reasonably complex math on the fly is also gone. Even now, nearly two years after the event, there are times when I fight to recall something I did recently, randomly lose my train of thought, or struggle with relatively simple concepts. 

I am also not likely to ever again have the executive functioning capabilities I had before the crash, with things like planning and task tracking badly affected. Given that my job as a digital design lead depended entirely on these abilities, and far more creative ones, I questioned whether I’d have been able to work again, but ultimately it wouldn’t end up mattering.

Timeline

I thought a very brief timeline of specific recovery milestones and events would probably be helpful, even just for posterity and my own recollection.

August-September 2024

After months of ghosting with no apologies, and escalating my claim with the adjuster’s manager, my bike and wheel write-off claim was finally settled. I finished about three months of fairly intense hand therapy and had my long-term disability claim with Manulife approved.

Fitness at this point was decent, given how recent the crash was, with about an hour of therapy homework per day, and good distance totals for walking (140k), running (90k) and cycling (410k), and 10-11 hours of resistance and yoga, each, for the two month time period. I continued to see improvement in my strength, coordination and general right hand functioning too. Typing and printing were still slow, but also still improving. Walking a lot by this time was thankfully not an issue, which boded well for eventually returning to travel.

In September we also took our first weekend trip since the crash, to Victoria, one of our favourite places. I was still in my post-crash dry phase and Connie was nursing a knee issue, so our tasting room excursions and walking took a bit of a hit, but the trip was still enjoyable.

And finally, after being evaluated in August, I began about six months of cognitive speech therapy in September.

October-November 2024

As a result of losing my spleen, I got five new vaccines in October, primarily to protect against encapsulated bacterial infections. Two of them required dosing two months apart and two of them will require boosters in 2029.

In October I also finally cracked a 10k continuous run. As well, I was regularly doing substantial trainer rides of more than an hour, and beginning to rebuild my power by doing slightly uncomfortable workouts. I was still very cautious riding my e-bike and I had already decided at this point, that I’d likely never ride solo on the open road again – only in a group.

I also finished my vestibular physiotherapy in November, with ongoing balance homework. To be honest, this was a pretty massive checklist item. My only goals have always been a return to reading, running and cycling. For some time, I had no idea what that looked like or how far I would get. Turns out, with regard to running and cycling, pretty far, with the only ceiling being personal comfort and whatever natural ability I have (and sadly, the inexorable effect of Father Time). With regard to reading, establishing a daily practice started to reap rewards very quickly in my recovery, well before the fall.

I had also begun to toy with a return to work during this time, but as I’ve already said, that didn’t come to pass. At the time I had been thinking of it as the last big step in my recovery. I’ll address that more shortly.

The biggest news for the fall period was that we moved back to Victoria in November. This is a bit of a complicated thing which will require unpacking in a separate post, but at the time we signed a one-year lease on November 4th to live in James Bay effective November 15th, and were very excited at the prospect of being in one of our favourite places permanently for retirement.

In October and November, my overall fitness numbers were pretty good, but the move to the island really hurt the totals in November. I had almost 600 total km of distance, but over 400 was in October. My walking improved month over month, but running dropped from 53 to 20km and cycling from 308 to 72km. I knew I would get things back on track in December, and did. I averaged about 5h20m of resistance and yoga each per month during this time, as well.

My final “act” of November, if you will, was to send the driver that hit me a letter. We had his name and business from the bystander texting his contact info to my wife, and a simple search in the area I was hit turned up a home-based business for him. After a couple edits to take out the unnecessary emotion, I sent the following (click the heading to read):

April 14th, 2024

I’m the guy you hit on April 14th. Since you said to my wife by text that you hoped I would recover fully, I thought I’d let you know what kind of damage even momentary inattentiveness can cause. My injuries were extensive and severe.

Physically, I came into Royal Columbian Emergency with significant lacerations down my left arm and on my left thigh and knee, and multiple fractured ribs. The force of the crash jammed my bowels up into my chest cavity and also resulted in me losing my spleen and rupturing my diaphragm. They had to put a stent in my right carotid artery for fear of enough oxygen getting to my brain, as I had become unresponsive shortly after arriving at RCH. As a result of the splenectomy alone, I am now permanently immunocompromised, which meant five new vaccines, boosters for two of them in five years, and being up to date on annual COVID and flu shots. More significantly, I can no longer safely go to concerts, hockey games or anywhere people are crowded into smaller spaces, including even just a bite out at a busy restaurant. This poses significant challenges for attending my son’s wedding next year. In short I am at a substantially higher risk of contracting infections than I was before the crash. I also have several disfiguring scars as a result. One the length of my abdomen, another about 4” long, perpendicular to that one (from the splenectomy, with a corresponding abdominal bulge), and more down my left forearm, on my knee and thigh, and several small scars from the feeding, drainage and intubation tubes. Beyond the scarring, the other effect has been a loss of sensation under my left arm and in my pectoral muscle. It’s unclear right now whether the feeling will return.

With regard to the bulge, it appears to be a small hernia, which will almost certainly require another surgery and the risk of further numbness in my chest/abdomen to repair.

I spent three weeks in Royal Columbian and was transferred to GF Strong for another five, which included starting very intense therapy and rehab.

Less obvious but far more significant … I suffered several small strokes (I am not someone normally at high risk of stroke) resulting in a traumatic brain injury which, in turn, affected my right arm and hand motor skills and coordination. It is getting better but may never fully recover. I also had visual deficits when first released from hospital (which have thankfully mostly resolved aside from the visual fatigue I refer to below). Similarly, I developed significant cognitive issues as a result of the brain injury. Memory, executive functioning, recall and many other issues have prevented me returning to work, which frankly, may never happen. I now also have severe light sensitivity, visual and mental fatigue and a persistent “brain fog” which may never lift.The brain injury has also caused significant vestibular (balance, dizziness, etc) symptoms, which have drastically affected my running and to a lesser degree, my cycling (both things I am passionate about). I also am much more paranoid of traffic in general and doubt I’ll ever ride solo in traffic again - something I used to really enjoy doing.

I have just finished six months of vestibular physiotherapy, had two months of hand therapy after I left GF Strong and will be in cognitive therapy for several more months. I am not carrying around anger because it wouldn’t be productive, wouldn’t change anything and wouldn’t help my continuing recovery. I will just mention though, if it isn’t clear by implication, the crash has permanently and significantly impacted my life, and aside from your premiums paying for my recovery, I suspect you’ve suffered no other financial costs. FYI, if we weren’t subject to no-fault insurance in BC you would have been liable for damages, and it would have cost you significantly more than higher insurance premiums. However, only crashes involving alcohol, road rage or distracted driving are typically subject to any further investigation or possible charges (and the police file offered no help). I remember you saying you didn’t see me (my ONLY recollection of anything for about  a week). It was a very clear day and I was dressed very visibly, so I often wonder if you were distracted, because you certainly weren’t paying enough attention to be driving. 

All of this doesn’t even touch on the stress and uncertainty you caused my wife and sons, who didn’t know if I would even survive, or, if so, if I would have permanent brain damage or possibly be blind (all things that were openly discussed in the first days after the crash). It also doesn’t touch on navigating the endless bureaucracy associated with income replacement insurance. Presently I have to deal with three different insurers (EI, ICBC and my LTD provider).

It has been over eight months since my life was altered permanently from the crash with you. According to estimates from the hospital and police, you were doing about 50 km\hr at the time of impact, when, in my opinion, you should have been going much slower in that area. However, it’s a pretty well established pattern that people pay less attention the closer they are to home, when driving. I don’t want your sympathy and have purposely not included my address or name, because I don’t want any kind of reply. However, if I have one thing to say in closing it’s to please, PLEASE slow down, and pay attention. I nearly died because you weren’t doing so on April 14th.

December 2024

I decided that December would be the last significant recovery update, as true big milestones were fewer and further between by the end of 2024. As it turned out my timeline would still have a few surprises and updates up its sleeve.

By the end of the year, I was still preparing as though I was going to return to work if possible, so the cognitive speech therapy I had begun in September was going to shift after the Christmas break. I was to begin exercises specifically tailored to resuming my job, and focus mostly on executive functioning like planning, task tracking and the like, all key to doing my job. Short-term memory and recall had improved a great deal by the end of 2024, a mere 8.5 months after the crash.

Cycling power output and ride speed on the trainer was getting close to where it was pre-crash. Running continued to progress well, amazingly well really. I was close to a 4:30/km pace on shorter, harder efforts and about 5:15-5:30/km on longer, easier efforts. These paces were, more or less, what I was running before the crash. By December, I had done a 13k run.

Finally, while I probably noticed it first in the summer, by December it had become pretty obvious I’d developed an incisional hernia where my spleen was removed, but I was waiting to get a surgery consult and diagnosis confirmation beyond my own suspicions. I would finally end up getting the consult and confirmation on February 20th, 2025.

Fitness Totals for 2024

Since I got back on track with my fitness in December, more or less, I decided to review the entire year in light of the impact the crash had on my ability to exercise.

• Total: 998 activities, 5380 km, 532 hrs
• Running: 81 activities, 385 km, 35 hrs
• Walking: 386 activities, 640 km, 143 hrs
• Cycling (trainer, e-bike): 234 activities, 4355 km, 121 hrs
• Strength: 71 activities, 46 hrs
• Yoga: 113 activities, 51 hrs
• Drums: 184 activities, 97 hrs

Monthly, I averaged 489kms overall and 5.4kms per activity, 32kms of running (the hardest activity to return to by far), 53kms of walking and 363 kms of cycling (of all kinds) for the year. When you consider that I couldn’t do any activities at all for two months, I should actually be averaging things over ten months.

2024 wasn’t remotely about how much I could do, or how fast, only just doing it.

January – March 2025

As I said above, I finally got a consult and incisional hernia diagnosis confirmation on February 20th, 2025. Actually getting the surgery would involve a lengthy wait and some “adventures” en route. More on that shortly.

I ended my cognitive speech therapy at the end of March. My SLP and I felt doing much more cognitive return to work prep was no longer beneficial (I was still planning to return to my job as of March) and the therapy had pretty much run its course. I had my SLP check in with my wife to be sure she also felt my TBI recovery was, more or less, complete, and she concurred.

At the end of March I also finally bought a new gravel bike. It took a while to isolate and fix a noise that had been caused by the d-fuse seatpost Giant puts in their higher end road and gravel bikes, but otherwise it’s been a joy to ride. Relaxed geometry and smaller chainrings make it a bit slower than a typical road bike, but I’m no longer worried about going fast.

Physically, I felt as close to fully recovered as I felt I was likely going to get. Cognitively, things were in pretty good shape as well. Short-term memory and recall were not far off where they’d been a year earlier, before the crash, my executive functioning capabilities seemed good enough to try working, and the visual fatigue with screen use I experienced for several months was a distant memory by spring 2025. Though, minor episodes of brain fog remained.

When seated I no longer experienced any vestibular symptoms and was holding steady at several hours of yoga and strength training per month. By this time I had also come to realize that extreme light sensitivity, and the loss of sensation in my left pectoral muscle and under my left arm were likely going to be permanent, but I still held hope for some marginal improvement in both areas.

Minor balance issues remained, but I could sustain running and cycling for pretty lengthy periods (two hours plus) and hit reasonably good paces. In other words, both mental and physical stamina were ready to be tested.

April – June 2025

While I outlined my experience with ICBC’s Enhanced Care model in a different post, I received their final scar lump sum payment in June. In total I received $56,000 for all my disfiguring scars ($13,000) and the life-altering injuries ($43,000), though they also paid for therapies and provided income replacement benefits. Read the post linked above for more about that, and the massive disappointment ICBC was for me.

I chose to take early retirement in June as well. My employer was having major budget issues, as many post-secondary institutions have been. Reductions in immigration and foreign students have resulted in far fewer applications for admission. As a result, they needed to reduce headcount across the institute, and by ten in just my department.

I was so focused on my return to work, that taking early retirement didn’t really register at first, but the more I thought about it, the more appealing the idea became. It meant that the final test of my recovery wouldn’t happen, but also that potential future stress was significantly reduced. At four months shy of 61, I qualified for a lump sum payment of 80% of my annual salary.

So, in spite of having approval for 100% remote work due to a medical condition, I never ended up returning to the virtual office, and officially retired in August. By this time my long runs were regularly in the 15-16k range, and longer rides were often 50-60k.

July – December 2025

As I said earlier, true milestones really became fewer and further between, so my next update didn’t come until the end of 2025, twenty months after the crash. For the six months between June 2025 and the end of the year, there was a bunch of administrivia, getting things at work wrapped up, closing my LTD and ICBC claims, getting my pension application and Pacific Blue Cross extended health and dental application done, and beginning to collect my pension and RIF investment income.

September also provided a bit of adventure for me, related to, but separate from the hernia repair wait …

Hernia Adventures, But No Repair Yet

As I said previously, I finally got a surgical consult and diagnosis confirmation in February 2025, and at the time, was waiting for a CT scan. Back in late summer we decided to go to Banff and Calgary in early September, but the morning we were going to leave I awoke with just about the worst nausea I’ve ever had, and I seemed to have a slight fever. Given that these are a couple of the symptoms of appendicitis, off to Royal Jubilee Emergency I went at about 5am on September 9th.

Several hours later there was no clear indication of appendicitis (an issue confirmed when I saw my surgeon in October) but I did manage to get a CT scan, as is customary to confirm an appendicitis, which I was hoping would be sufficient to move my hernia repair forward. It was not. In my October consult, my surgeon indicated that they do a different kind of CT for hernia surgery. In other words, I was still waiting for that CT scan. However, the scan I did get also showed a slight narrowing of my colon, which can be indicative of colitis. And the only way to make sure I don’t have colitis? The joy of a colonoscopy.

Finally, I was also put on a waiting list for hernia surgery on December 15th, after 10 months of waiting. On the 15th of October I finally got the CT needed for the hernia repair done. Nothing particularly unexpected, though the hole in my abdominal wall was roughly a 6 centimetre opening, making it medium-large and definitely not doable via laparoscopy, as I had hoped it might be.

I had my last colonoscopy in October 2019 and wasn’t expecting another for five more years, but it turned out I didn’t have to wait too long and got it done on November 22nd. My surgeon did the procedure and, aside from having a couple benign polyps biopsied, all was good.

Honestly, none of this would be all that bad, but the hernia itself is all kinds of annoying, given its location in my upper left abdominal wall. It heavily impacts everything from exercise to sex and I wear a compression belt most of the time to avoid strangulation.

As I said earlier, our retirement plans are a bit complicated right now, and will need unpacking in a future post, but in November we bought a townhouse in Royal Bay, Colwood. This is a long way off, and 30 minute+ drive, from retiring to Victoria, as we originally intended, so all I’ll say is that there’s more to come about that in the coming months.

Fitness held pretty steady during this time, with me getting up to an 18k run and 80k ride by the end of 2025. In spite of thinking I wouldn’t do so again, I’d also done a bit of solo riding on the road, though it was mostly in the form of shorter trips between safer low traffic and dedicated bike routes. I’m not really interested in more extreme events and racing any more, so I expect that I’ll probably target about 100k of running, 450-500k of cycling and 7-8 hours of resistance and yoga per month going forward.

I haven’t said much about it to this point, but after dropping 30+ pounds while in the hospital, I held steady at 150-155 (nearly a perfect weight for my 5’8″ frame) for the past few months, and continue to still. It took me a long time to regain and stabilize my weight – at least 18 months.

Fitness Totals for 2025

I’ve gotten to a comfortable plateau with my fitness levels, so this is the last update I will do with yearly totals, mostly just to compare 2024 and 2025 for fun. There was a substantial jump in activity level between the two years, so again, I expect to hopefully remain at this level for some time now.

• Total: 1082 activities, 6828 km, 682 hrs
• Running: 109 activities, 1235 km, 77 hrs
• Walking: 478 activities, 640 km, 260 hrs
• Cycling (trainer, e-bike, road): 156 activities, 4717 km, 235 hrs
• Strength: 95 activities, 60 hrs
• Yoga: 182 activities, 78 hrs

Spring – Summer 2026

While I’m finally done with tracking my recovery progress, I know there will be a final update about my hernia repair and recovery, so I expect this to be that, if I ever get the procedure.

Thanks …

Royal Columbian Hospital, GF Strong and in the community, the many doctors and surgeons who performed minor miracles saving my life and the many therapists who have put me on the road to a very solid recovery, I literally would not be here without them.

First and foremost, my wife Connie, who has been an absolute rock star throughout. I know dealing with this and some of the illogical frustrations and flat out weird shit I’ve said and done through my recovery and rehab hasn’t been easy. She has more grace than I have a right to experience and I couldn’t love a person more.

The kids, who routinely kept my spirits up and put up with my many updates and cycling/running and other milestones, in spite of having no personal interest in the subject 🙂

My extended family and old friends, including well wishes from far and wide, and most welcome visits from a couple cousins from Ontario and my oldest friend Andy from Calgary (54 years and counting). I’m happy to say that I surprised all of them with my progress (Given the severity of my crash, I know their expectations were probably pretty low).

My Vancouver friends, who routinely grabbed coffee and beer and hung out with me.