Road Rash

I am not exactly what you would call 'athletic'. I am more what you would call 'laughably inept at most sports requiring any kind of skill or coordination'. So you can imagine my surprise when I started running a few years ago that not only do I really enjoy it, but I also appear to have an affinity for it. After all, how hard is it to do something that most people learn to do before they're two? As a sport, you just do it for a longer period of time, and with less joy.

With the exception of stupid plantar fasciitis, I have so far escaped injury. I did get whipped in the face once with a tree branch, and I've stepped in poop, and I've almost peed my pants and one time I came really close to vomiting, but I've never really hurt myself. Until yesterday.

I was having a really good run. It was my favorite kind of running weather, 50 degrees and overcast, no wind. Only about a mile in, and my legs were starting to loosen up. It takes that long for me to go from 'fuck my legs are made of lead' to 'I am Zola Budd wheeeee!'. There is a short leg of my regular route, where I come out of our neighborhood, down the busy main street, past the grocery store, through a business park, and back down to the neighborhood again. It is one of my least favorite parts of a short run, but includes a great uphill and a nice, steady downhill.

I'm running down the main road at a good clip, when all of a sudden my asshole left ankle decides to roll. I totally collapsed, like a gazelle caught in mid leap by a hunter's bow. Okay, maybe more like a water buffalo tripping over a stump, but whatever. You get the idea.

Bitch went down.

I shredded my right calf, seriously abrased my left knee, and hurt my poor widdle hands. I cried. I said lots of bad words. I jumped up and down and sprayed blood all over the road. I wish I had pulled a Nancy Kerrigan and rolled around in the road screaming WHHHHYYYYY? But I was hugely embarrassed and I didn't think of it. No one stopped, which is both horrifying (I can only assume that all the people driving by were yankees) and relieving (maybe they were transients and there's no chance they'll recognize me when we meet in the grocery store).

Because I am really very tough, I ran home. I thought, If marathoners can finish a race with poopypants, by God I can run home with a skinned knee! And I did feel a little badass, running and bleeding. of course, I wasn't bleeding badly, and it was only like a quarter of a mile to the house but, still. A little badass.

The Husband was napping with the baby when I got home, so I did what any good attention whore would do in the digital age. I posted it on Facebook.

Isn't that horrifying? Aren't your horrified?

It's really just a glorified scrape, but it looks terrible and I figure I can limp around for a few days and get some sympathy. I don't think I can cook dinner tonight, my leg really hurts. I don't think I can do the laundry, my leg really hurts. 


I take the breaks where I can find them, friends.