So, what is an injury? Let’s ‘break’ it down, and give it a bit of an empirical explanation: an injury is something that sucks! First, there’s that pain part. You know what I’m talking about; the part that hurts. Then, or maybe even just before the ‘pain’ part, there’s that idea that whatever just happened might keep you from running tomorrow.

About a week and a half ago, I was mountain biking, and flew off some hill like a jackass. Me. Not the hill. I had very little trouble in the air, but then there was this superfluous impact right at the end. The bike’s fine; that was my first concern too. Broken collar bone; no worries. Me. Not the bike. I can run with one of those. I never saw anybody run on their collar bone. Hell, both broken shouldn’t bother me.

Now, I don’t remember the last time I was right about something, but it certainly wasn’t when I was thinking any of this. Ten steps the next morning, and I called it a run. I called it my short run, of course, and even timed myself. I was slow on my ‘10 step’ pace, so I knew something was wrong. And, whatever the cause, it was producing an incredible amount of pain in my shoulder.

So, I realized I might not be able to run for a few days. I thought of it as ‘tapering off’ for a good while without reason. I think I was supposed to go through five stages of loss or something, but I never really evolved past anger. I just wanted to crush something for 6 days straight, but of course, one of my crushing appendages was suspended for two weeks for idiotic behavior.

I sat inside, spending a great deal of time on the computer, and laser-healing my shoulder with my eyes. Maybe it didn’t help at all, but I can’t, and nor can you, prove otherwise. I did have a bit of time to catch up on my writing about cabin fever, but not until after I had already had a bit of cabin fever. I love to write when living the moments.

During my ‘break,’ I did a great deal of wanting to run. It just wasn’t having the same affect as really running, and certainly wasn’t helping maintain any condition held before hand. I was even up to wanting to run 5 miles more than I really ran the week before. And definitely, from a training perspective, do not carbo-load for wanting to run!

Trail running is my life. Family, a house, a job; they are all wonderful, but everything is made better when my feet meet the foot of a trail. When I just can’t run, it seems devastating. The most beautiful portion of each day was taken away. I threw rocks at the gods, but I took the sling off first.

Well, to tie this up quickly, because I like to be concise with my clarity, I’m running again. Yeah! Still, I’m only hitting a few miles a day, and feel like some guy a boy scout might want to help across the street, but I’m out there. I will feel stronger daily, as each pop tart falls behind with the miles.

While this all makes so much sense, I just hope I was able to impart upon you my single most important message; I got hurt!

Bookmark to: