Picture the scene.

It's late, the three of you are in a small, enclosed room. Tension is in the air. How better to get through the night than to start comparing injuries?

It might be a particularly male trait to be proud of scars, or to flaunt one's exposure to pain and suffering, but there are certain demographic groups outside shark hunters which find themselves more able to partake in this behaviour. Witness cyclists. No sooner has someone shown off some gruesome road rash than stories will abound of white van men, errant pedestrians and killer rabbits.

I have always been one of the lucky ones, able to drift into the background as such discussions begin, quietly telling myself that my greater awareness and balance has kept me from harm, happy in my cocoon of smug perfection.

My relative paucity of cycling scarrage was actually probably more down to luck. At seven, riding my black Strika downhill, some older kids thought it would be funny to wave a tennis racket in front of me. True, they weren't to know that my brakes could have stopped a jumbo jet after landing within 5 yards of landing, but as I sailed through the air to ultimately use my head as landing gear I wasn't about to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Other than that there have been a variety of minor tumbles resulting in colourful bruising and language, but not much else. Unless you include the obligatory mountain biker's pedal tattoo to the shin.

But now that has all changed. I can at last join the throng of those who have been seriously injured while on a bike. Or to be more exact, immediately after leaving the bicycle.

And this time I have no older boys with tennis rackets on whom to lay the blame.