Since my latest cycling mishap was really hard to swallow — even harder than that last glass of godawful stuff you chug before a colonoscopy — I had no plans to write about it. Words from Times News sports editor Emmett McCall, though, caused me to reconsider.

“How quickly you’re able to get back on the bike again,” he offered in an email, “and what you did while recovering sounds like it would make a good column.”

It took a few days, but I came to see the value in that — and in something else. Writing such a column might just work the way Miralax or Ducolax or Golytely does.

But instead of inducing a will-it-ever-end bowel movement, it could lead to something else: a partial catharsis. So for your reading pleasure and my mental health, read on — after you tell Alexa to play “Still Crazy After All These Years.”

I was three hours and 40 minutes into a spirited Saturday ride with a dozen others and feeling strong. The ride leader called for a pee break just before we crossed a bridge closed to motorized vehicles near Lake Ontelaunee and Leesport.

While walkers and cyclists still use the bridge, cement barriers keep motorists from doing so. Most of the group crossed the bridge and then pedaled at an easy pace, waiting for those like me who decided to stop.

On the more highly trafficked side 100 feet or so before the barriers stands a Bridge Out sign. I knew of it from previous rides.

What I didn’t know was that there once was a second Bridge Out sign — and that the two-inch metal holder for it still protruded from the leaf-littered road. On a dreary day and amongst leaves, I didn’t see it either.

I hit it in such a way that it turned the front wheel 90 degrees to the right, which threw me to the left. My left hip slammed onto the cold macadam.

The impact fractured my left femur.

Irony or ironies: If I would’ve fallen on my right side, the surgeon is sure that nothing would have broken. The two titanium rods and the three screws inserted after I broke my right femur in a bicycle race 10 years ago would’ve prevented that.

The hard-to-swallow stuff doesn’t end there. At the time of the crash, I was about three months into an intense, once-a-week, 90-minute weightlifting workout designed to strengthen the “pedaling” muscles — the glutes, the hamstrings, and the quadriceps — and it was clearly working.

What wasn’t working after the accident, obviously, was yours truly. Because of my school’s Christmas vacation, however, I only missed 15 days of teaching instead of 25.

Yet from the day I was discharged, I returned to teaching — teaching my leg how to work again. That’s the benefit of using rods and screws to stabilize the femur instead of immobilizing the leg in a cast: The leg can bear weight immediately.

There’s no question about that. But there is an important question to answer after such a procedure.

How much time are you willing to devote to your recovery?

The day after I was discharged, Christmas day, I worked out for two hours. Walked with the walker back and forth dozens of times through my father’s house.

Did one-legged squats and calf raises with my good leg. Figured out all sorts of ways to modify exercises so I could lift weights for my upper body.

One day later, for instance, I realized that the walker could be used as a dipping bar to work my triceps. Doing so, however, made me anxious, so anxious that I believe I held my breath.

That’s probably why I kept getting so woozy that I had to sit after every set. Either that or I popped one too many Percocet the night before.

Five days after being discharged, I was ambulant enough to mount my father’s spinning bike and pedal — but only with my good leg. I cycled that way for 77 minutes.

Then I lifted my broken leg off the utility stool it rested upon, placed my foot atop the pedal and pedaled as best as I could. The broken leg could tolerate the bottom half of a full revolution, so I did that for 30 minutes to facilitate blood flow. To finish for the day, I did 45 minutes’ worth of the exercises the physical therapist suggested after my initial evaluation.

Eight days after being discharged, I worked out with the PT who evaluated me for the first time. Since the session was scheduled for 10 a.m., I did 60 minutes of upper-body weightlifting and abdominal work beforehand.

After that 60-minute session and the return drive to my father’s house, I pedaled one-legged for 60 minutes, did the PT’s prescribed exercises for another 20, and then walked around the house — but this time a cane replaced the walker.

Sometime after that, the leg “went dead” and swelled even more than usual.

When another PT saw the swelling the next morning, he asked what I had done the day before. I told him and he said, “You don’t want to go too crazy.”

Read next week’s column to learn what happened next.