30 Sep 2024 Back on the bike
By Dwain Hebda
Lori Paladino Ross chuckles at the reporter’s question about wipeouts and takes a pause.
“I was on a descent over on Wye Mountain,” she said. “It was just a small descent and there was gravel in the road. I didn’t remember it went really quick right there on a curve. I slid.”
She chuckles again, but it’s of the edgy, laugh-at-yourself variety.
“Got some gravel in my arm and in my leg, had some road rash,” she said, “but it hurt my feelings real bad.”
By itself, the tale is one of a thousand a cyclist might tell over his or her lifetime on the saddle. As part of Paladino Ross’ personal saga, however, the incident is instructional as to the power of the mind to compartmentalize and order events. A few months before this wipeout, she was involved in a rush-hour traffic collision that could have paralyzed her or worse.
But not only did that incident not deter her from riding again, getting back on the bike was the light at the end of a recovery tunnel. To have endangered her great passion through a rookie mistake is infuriating to think back on.
“I’ll tell you why that one really hurt my feelings, is because it was my fault,” she said. “I was going too fast on a new bike and it slid. The other wreck, the accident, wasn’t my fault. This one was. That was the one where my daughters said, ‘Mom, are you sure you don’t need to get a Peloton?’”
Paladino Ross grew up in Catholic Point, a speck of the faithful in rural Conway County founded and farmed by Italian immigrants, her grandfather among them. After college, she held various jobs for Nabholz Construction, Conway Regional and CHI St. Vincent, during which time she’d frequently ride her bike to work or to St. Joseph Catholic Church.
“I used to live on the east side of town, and I’d ride my bike over Siebenmorgan Bridge over the interstate, to the church and pray at the grotto, then ride back,” she said. “That’s like a total of eight miles, and I thought I was doing something big on my little Walmart bike, you know?
Making friends in the local cycling community soon pushed her eight-mile jaunts to multiple rides a week, each covering several multiples of that distance. She also started entering organized events, completing 20 of them at last count.
“Anything with a medal,” she said.
All that to say, she was no greenhorn when she set off to ride in October 2020, even though in hindsight she notes that unlike her usual routine, she was riding after work instead of her customary early morning time that avoided excess vehicular traffic. At the intersection of German Lane and Dave Ward Drive in Conway, a pickup pulling a trailer changed lanes suddenly, causing her to brake hard, laying down the bike as the back wheels of the dual-axle trailer ran across her midsection.
“It was horribly painful, but I never shed a tear. I guess that’s trauma,” she said. “I remember I would have to scream just to catch a breath. I would scream and then I’d breathe.”
Paladino Ross didn’t lose consciousness until the meds kicked in at Conway Regional, the first of seven days in the hospital. When she was lucid enough, doctors gave an inventory of her injuries―three damaged vertebrae and a broken ankle caused by her foot not releasing from the pedal clip.
“I was extremely grateful to be alive,” she said, “and anxious to get back up and get back to normal. It never once occurred to me that I might not walk again or that I would be confined to a wheelchair. It never occurred to me that I wasn’t going to be moving forward in some way.”
“Moving forward” meant getting back on a bike as soon as possible, something many people might have had serious second thoughts over. Not Paladino Ross―in fact, when her cousin called with the news he’d entered them both in a 100-mile summertime cycling event in Kansas, it galvanized her resolve.
“I was a determined patient. I was determined to do everything they said, no matter what it was,” she said. “I wore a brace that went from my hip bones up to just under my arms for three-and-a-half months, 24 hours a day, except for in the shower.”
After 123 days of convalescing, Paladino Ross climbed back on a bike to train for the ride with her cousin, completing the Hotter Than Hell 100-miler in summer 2021, savoring every pedal stroke to the finish line. Today, the accident doesn’t define her, but it has changed her.
“The accident humbled me in ways I never dreamed of,” she said. “My priorities have changed; I don’t place work above my family, which I had been very guilty of doing. I resolved to say “yes” to anything church-related and there have been some amazing requests that came to me.
“I sponsored someone wanting to become Catholic, I sponsored a family from Ukraine, I started doing prayer study and bible study. I’m a cantor at church and when I got up there to sing the first time, I did it with tears in my eyes.”
She’s also opened her own executive coaching business, Clarity Consulting and Coaching, where she pours herself into clients seeking professional and personal improvement. It’s a role she now sees as more ministry than vocation.
“I’m no longer going to spend my time in any job or activity that doesn’t bring me deep joy and the knowledge that I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing,” she said. “God built me to do what I’m doing right now. He built me to be this coach. He built me to encourage people. I’m going to spend my life doing just that.”
- Back on the bike - September 30, 2024
- First in, last out - June 30, 2024
- Person of the Month: Rojay Moore - June 2, 2024
