The sport of running is a dangerous one. An ironic statement coming from the likes of someone like me, I know. But seriously, it’s filled with risk. And I don’t mean the concerns of plantar fasciitis, Iliotibial Band Syndrome, blisters, stress fractures or back problems. Those are minor, treatable, in many cases avoidable and, most importantly, often predictable and understood. What concerns me is this – stupid, lack-of-common-sense-induced injuries. Accidents. And dumb ones at that. Like the two that I just recently suffered. Not only are they painful, they are also extremely embarrassing, which hurts like no other injury.
Precisely one month ago I went for my first fully barefoot 3+ mile run. The surface was asphalt road and concrete sidewalk. I never cease to be amazed at the wide variety of textures on our roads here in America.
It was a pride-building run. I maintained a solid speed (avg. 9:17 pace, not bad for a beginner looking ultimately for distance), good form, was not overly tired and was feeling puffed up and proud as I rounded the last corner to my street.
On my street, as well as many others in the surrounding neighborhood, were massive piles of leaves – our township requires leaves to be blown into piles on the edge of the road for scheduled vacuuming by the leaf truck. An unfortunate combination of massive piles of leaves (in New England they are made of snow and we call them snow ‘banks. Pennsylvania has “leaf ‘banks”, apparently) and gusting wind created a situation in which leaves were strewn all over the road, resembling a brownish squidgy carpet in some places.
So there I was, zipping along in my bare feet, happy as a clam, when all of a sudden my foot – expecting to be met with ground underneath – suddenly disappeared into a pile of leaves that I thought was merely covering flat ground. It was flat and flush with the surface. Little did I know that it was a recessed sewer grate, approximately six inches below the level of the road, which had filled in with stray leaves and thereby gave the impression that it was solid ground when it fact it was not.
Where my foot was expecting to stop, it kept going. All the way down until it crunched on the uncomfortable metal below. Thankfully my years spent skateboarding conditioned my unconscious mind to relax when taking a dive, rather than tense up, and my ankle, knee, hips – all the way up through my torso – simply crumpled easily and softly toward the ground. That is, until my opposing knee came face to face with the curb at a high velocity.
It hurt. I won’t lie. Blood was everywhere. Everywhere. Yet just as easily as I crumpled into a ball, I sprang back towards my feet and immediately back into my run, as if nothing had happened, looking around self-consciously to see if anyone had witnessed my fall. They did. Thankfully it was only a small group of young children.
It happens, sure… But I was literally in front of my immediate neighbor’s house! I wasn’t a mile away, or even three houses. I was practically at my doorstep! Such a remarkable run, and it literally ended in a bloody mess next to my driveway.
I’ve been careful of that spot since and have certainly been more mindful in general, yet there’s always an apprehensiveness when I get near that particular house – and just three nights ago I was reminded why!
Running at night while in my home town has become my new habit. The air is crisp and silent. The roads are empty and I can trot down them without fear of traffic. There’s no sound save for the gentle wind and the quiet pit-pat-pit-pat of my feet upon pavement – a constant, steady and reassuring reminder of my goal. Naturally there are new categories of dangers while running at night though, and visibility can be a contributing factor to all of them. Thankfully I have well-developed night vision – better than in the day in fact, when I have to squint unnaturally tight to see anything at all (a result of blue eyes?) – but combine deceptive shadows and lack of light with fatigue and lack of attention and you have a recipe for disaster.
And so it was, as I rounded that same corner onto my street, right next to the very same neighbor’s house, feeling quite ecstatic at my 4.3 miles and constant heart rate, when wham, I was clotheslined by a tree branch. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been looking at my wristwatch. There went my pride again.
The next day my girlfriend asked me with surprise “is your forehead breaking out?” (I don’t often face that challenge) to which I had to respond “No dear. That’s from the branch that took me down last night.” – the rest of my face turning a shade more crimson.
So yes, running is dangerous. And for me at least, the physiological concerns take a back seat to the errors of judgement and innattention that seem to creep up, often when I feel at my most secure. I can’t wait to see what stupid things my mind does to me when I’m finally running distance and find myself in the middle of the night, on a trail deep in the woods, pushing mile 60 or so and beginning to hallucinate. Adventure around every corner!
In the meantime, I’m off to hunt for my pride – while being sure to avoid my neighbor’s house. Mind that last step…
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[...] problems. The injuries – save for one silly accident (embarrassingly covered in Hazards of Running) – have more to do with my own developing running form, doing too much too soon, and in one [...]
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