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For most Sydney cyclists, a quiet Sunday roll through Dee Why on the Northern Beaches is as routine as the morning coffee that usually follows. But as Brad Mills was reminded in mid-November, cycling has a way of turning the ordinary into the unexpected — and in a blink.
 

“The lights changed, but not in a way you’d ever think you’d have to stop for,” Mills recalls of the experience that left him in hospital with myriad broken bones and internal injuries.

 

Mills, speaking two weeks after the crash, describes how he and Dan Bonello rolled through the traffic lights when a car coming the other way began a right-hand turn into their path. He shifted left to avoid it — Bonello did the same — when somehow their wheels or handlebars tangled. One second he was upright, the next … down — no warning, no chance to brace, no time to think.

 

“I’ve had crashes where you get a few seconds to adjust or prepare,” Mills continues. “But this one … one moment I was up, the next I was down. Just instant.”
 

The outcome was brutal — and painful. Mills, who until then had been in near-peak condition and form, sustained a broken collarbone, six fractured ribs, a cracked pelvis and bruised lungs.
 

He was rushed by ambulance to Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney, where surgeons plated his collarbone with eight screws and stabilised his pelvis with another large screw.
 

“They wanted me in a wheelchair for six weeks,” Mills says.
 

“Yesterday [November 26] I got the green light to put partial load on the pelvis. I’m getting rid of this chair in a week, onto crutches, and I’ve already started riding on the trainer.”
 

Mills’ surgeon told him he was “fucking crazy” for getting back on the bike so soon. Despite the feedback, he still rode for 40 minutes.
“It felt really good,” he laughs. “Good for the head.”

Since then, Mills has ramped up his recovery even further — and remarkably so — from increasing his time on the home trainer to two hours a week later, to getting back riding on the road.

 

Amazingly, on December 9, he raced at Tuesday Night Heffron … and on a gravel bike.