“After the first hour of recovery, you start to think about when you get to do it again,” said Mrs. Susie McGinnity about her recent mountain biking accident.

McGinnity, a multilingual teacher at NDA, has been mountain biking for a long time and recently suffered a severe collarbone injury, causing her to have a plate and two screws installed in her clavicle.

“Accidents that result in a broken collar bone are very common in mountain bike racing,’’ she told the Journalism I class.

A college friend “tricked” her into competing in her first race, the Chequamegon Fat Tire Festival, and she has continued to ride ever since.

“I thought it would be like the Fox River Trail,” she said. “Instead it was a mud fest.”

“I was so mad at my friend,” she explained, “but then an hour later I started to think about when to do it next.”

Indeed, it was the recent running of that race where she broke her collarbone during competition. She flipped over her handlebars.

One of her friends who was racing on the shorter trail was in the medical profession and helped her get to a hospital.

Always an athlete, McGinnity ran track in high school and now enjoys mountain biking, snowboarding and sledding with her two huskies.

She has competed in a plethora of cross country races, including races that take up to 24 hours.

“The only difference between the 12-hour races and the 24-hour races is that they require you to put on a light at a certain point in the 24-hour race,” said the teacher.

Undaunted by her injury, McGinnity plans to bike the same race next year.

“That will be when I know I’m fully recovered, when I can complete it next year,” she said.