“I’ve been told to push through certain levels of pain” - Lizzie Deignan on the road recovery after suffering broken arm in Ronde van Vlaanderen crash

After being involved in a nasty crash at the Ronde van Vlaanderen over two weeks ago, Lizzie Deignan suffered a broken arm that has forced her to miss Paris-Roubaix, as well as all of the Ardennes Classics this season.

On how she has been recovering from the injury, the Lidl-Trek rider said in an interview with the BBC that “I’ve been told to push through certain levels of pain, particularly because of the injury I’ve had. To get full mobility back, I have to push myself to straighten my arm more than I want to. I am struggling to know what is a good level of pain. So I'm figuring out my limits in terms of pain of a broken bone. I’ve not done that before”.

The 35-year-old, who is a mother of two, has had support from her husband and former professional cyclist Philip Deignan, who previously rode for teams such as Team Sky and won a stage of the Vuelta a España in 2009, as she went on to say “I’ve come back from two pregnancies, so I know the process of getting fit again. It's about being patient. I’ve never broken a bone in my life before, so I didn’t know what to expect. Luckily, my husband has broken several. So he has been guiding me through it”.

Deignan expected to be on the start line for the Tour of Britain Women in June, as well as the Giro d’Italia Donne and the Tour de France Femmes later in the season. She also hopes to be selected for the Olympic Games Road Race in Paris this summer, but her selection could be in jeopardy due to the amount of preparation races that she has been forced to cut from her schedule.

On her road to recovery and potential selection for the Olympics, Deignan said “I’m already on the turbo doing the hard yards in the garage. The limiting factors are holding brake levers, gearing. I don’t have strength in my hand yet. The main problem is Olympics selection time, I missed a good chunk of races I was peaking for in terms of getting selected - there's actually plenty of time for competing. But selection is harder than it's ever been. So that’s bad timing for me”.