“Ouch” is all I can say about my hill run today .. the first time i’ve wiped out in a few years. I figure i’d be a nice guy and not post the pictures directly on the front page of my blog for fear of scaring people, but (if you dare) here is a shot of my wound after I returned home and pulled up my pant leg, pretty gruesome. Here is the same wound after I took a shower and prior to doing the formal cleaning out and bandaging. Yep, it hurts. I guess the good side of it is that there is no muscle damage and at this point, there is no bruising, but its early yet, it may bruise up later on or overnight.. Thanks to everyone who wished me well via email or by replying to my tweet this morning about it.

So how did it happen? Well, i’m not sure exactly. I was just about a mile in to doing my favorite hill course this morning, and although I knew the sides of the road were fairly clear from snow, there was only a little bit of shoulder to run on and I don’t think I was paying well enough attention to my footsteps. It was funny how I just wrote last night about this exact topic of running in the aftermath of snow with icy roads and sufft. I know for sure I didn’t slip on ice this morning, however if I had to guess what really happened, I believe I hit either a chunk of frozen dirt that was frozen to the ground, or a pile of snow that was frozen to the ground, i’m just not sure which one it was. I hit it with my left foot and went directly down ..

All I know is that I was suddenly on the ground and felt this excruciating pain on my right knee and saw blood .. thankfully there was no traffic coming either way when I fell, which could have only made it worse. So with that being the case, my “hope” is that nobody actually saw me fall, even though I got up and made it look like I meant to do it (i’m still a guy, and a big guy at that, it must have been funny to watch). I figure it was good that I had pants on also, and that I was wearing gloves or else I would have probably tore up my hands also since I used them when I landed. I did put a hole in my pants though .. that along with the poorly replaced zipper at the bottom means that new pants are on the plan pretty soon (maybe I can get a discount since its the end of the season). The pants probably saved me from a doctors trip to get the cinders/rocks extracted from my knee though, it was tore up nice without the rocks, but had nothing actually in it, so I don’t expect a major infection as long as I take care of it.

So being the true psycho runner that I am, I continued on after my fall to finish my run anyway, and logged 12.3 miles total over the most difficult hills I could find.. I noticed by about mile 10 that there was a red tint to the bottom of my right leg, which started to get me worried as it glistened in the sun. I figured that if Lindsay Knoll can ski in the Olympics with a bruised shin, I can run 11 miles on a ripped up knee ..

It doesn’t appear that this fall will put me out of commission from training, I just have to take care of it. That means wrapping it prior to heading out for runs and keeping it clean. I’m trying to get it to stop ‘oozing’ .. yeah, kind of sick I know, but its oozing and bleeding slightly since its a nice gash, so the hope is after a few days it will harden up..

In other happenings, i’m now without a flight to Cincinnati for the Flying Pig .. I have to rebook my trip. They changed around the departure time on May 2nd and there would be NO WAY I could make the flight now .. and my suggestion to anyone using Expedia, DON’T EVER CALL THEM, their operators have no clue what they are doing, plus they tried to rip me off. It was cheaper for me to cancel the whole trip and rebook using the credit than to change just one of the two flights .. its amazing how they stay in business.. I got a good deal, but will ALWAYS book online.

Hopefully another update tomorrow with how this knee feels .. just taking it easy now and tomorrow to let it start to heal up .. I worked up to 66 miles this week, so its been a good week and I expect it to continue, i’m feeling more confident about the race in 5 weeks.

My last thought is … STAY SAFE when out there running, today was almost “my day”, I’m counting my blessings.. Thankfully its not that bad and won’t put me out ..