Sandy Jacobson shows the cuts she sustained when she rode her bike into a fishing line. (CBC)An Edmonton woman suffered cuts to her face and neck after she rode her bicycle into a fishing line strung across a bike path.

"I didn't think too much of it, until I felt the fishing wire actually in my teeth.... It hit me in the face and I felt it in my mouth," Sandy Jacobson said after the Sunday night incident in Rundle Park.

The line hit Jacobson on the bridge of her nose, got caught in her teeth, then sliced into the side of her neck as she turned her head.

"EMT [Emergency Medical Technician] said had it caught me right in the neck, like come down six inches [15 centimetres] lower, it could have been a different story, right?" she said.

Jacobson was flipped backward and thrown to the ground, while her shoes were still clipped into the pedals of her mountain bike.

Jacobson then saw what had hit her. A fishing pole had been stuck upright into the ground and the line was strung across the riverside trail.

Young man charged

Jacobson remembered seeing a group of four young men sitting in the picnic area and she went back to ask them why the line was strung across the trail. The boys asked her why she was riding so fast, she said, and the conversation soon became confrontational.

When riding back home, Jacobson came across members of a City of Edmonton parks crew who called police after she told them her story.

A 21-year-old man has been charged with criminal negligence causing bodily harm.

Jacobson is well-known in Edmonton for her athletic career as a marathon runner.

She is telling her story to warn others to be careful along the trails. She now plans to be more aware of her surroundings when she's out for a bike ride.

"I guess you have to take a step back in today's society and, just from an awareness standpoint, just be cautious."