The Good and the Ugly

The Redbuds and Dogwoods are bursting with color here in Richmond, but there weren’t any in the woods of Prince William Forest Park on Saturday. The only foliage we saw were the dead remnants of last year’s beech leaves clinging desperately to dry branches until this spring's new growth finally drives them off. 

I ran with a bunch of Marines on Saturday. The Irish Sprint 10K is organized by the US Marine Corps and finishing gets you a guaranteed entry into October’s Marine Corps Marathon. Judging from quantity of high and tight coifs, plenty of Marines participated too.

The course was about 50-50 roads and trails. The first half was heavily rolling terrain with a fundamental uphill trend. The second half was mainly flat and downhill, but the diabolical race director set the final 300 meters on a steady incline. On that last stretch, I passed one guy chugging along rhythmically muttering, “Dig deep, dig deep, dig deep.” And he did.  

I think all the top finishers were active or retired Marines. Even the first place masters winner was a 45 year old retired Lt. Colonel who finished in 38:56 which works out to less than six and a half minutes per mile.  The first masters woman was a retired marine also and member of the Marine Corps Marathon Hall of Fame. These are serious people.

Yes, the morning beer was green

Third place overall went to a high school freshman at 38:24. Yikes. I haven’t timed any of my training runs yet, so I had no idea what to expect. I finished in 50:55 and that works out to about 8:13 per mile. Given the tough course, I’m plenty happy with that.

My number one fan, inimitable support crew and all around favorite person, Kimberly Anderson, was waiting for me at the finish and got this shot of me enjoying a green beer with St. Patrick and a fine bagpiper.

The organizers arranged for music at three places along the course. But I have to tell you, the music at the start line was like none I had ever heard before. The DJ played some violent metal-head, warrior-like Marine Corps songs with eerie  rumbling beats and lyrics that would curl your hair – lines about marching on into the fire…. Then he mixed in some IRA drinking songs with lyrics about avenging the deaths of your Irish brothers and stuff like that. Chilling, but fun.

So Saturday was a good day. Finished a tough 10K number 9 of 111 in my age group and in the top 12% of nearly 1,700 finishers overall. Sunday was not so good. Sunday I made a big training blunder. Here’s what happened.

I scheduled a 20 mile run for Sunday. We usually like to do long runs point to point. Kim typically meets me at the halfway split with food and fluids, then she picks me up at the finish and we go have lunch. This week she had a handful of students collecting ribbons at a horse show so I was on my own.

I planned poorly. I laid out a loop course, but didn’t stage any food or fluids. I figured I could stop at a convenience store along the way if I needed to reload. I also planned to run my marathon pace as far as possible – I need to beat nine minute miles in order to easily qualify for JFK 50 Miler. The temperature was a lot hotter than I thought.

The first ten miles I was right on. Even with a stop at mile six to try to fix my broken glasses and mess with my tunes. I stuck to sidewalks on the big rolling hills along Broad Street and Lauderdale Road. A quarter mile up and a quarter mile down (I’m guessing). I started bonking during the eleventh mile as Lauderdale goes up and then down into Patterson. I was running out of fluids and had no food. But I made eleven miles in 99 minutes – right on schedule.

There’s a Dairy Queen at the corner, and I bought a coke. Drank half of it and dumped the other half into my CamelBak. That was a big help. For about fifteen minutes. Never entered my mind to get something to eat. What a dope.

This pic was taken at roughly mile fifteen

Patterson has big long rolling hills, just like the ones on Broad Street in the first half of the course. It's like running along an interstate that has an intermittent shoulder. There was no shade and the temp was getting up towards 80. I hate heat. I am very much a cold weather guy. By mile fifteen I was out of fluids again and there were no more convenience stores or fast food joints.

My legs had long since ceased to act like legs and had become more like jointed lead logs that I had to keep throwing forward from the hip. When I finally got to Manakin Road and knew that I was only four miles from home, I got an unexpected attitude adjustment and kicked up the tempo, but it only lasted 150 yards. Before I got to Hermitage Road, I was so dehydrated my hamstrings and glutes had seized up and I knew it was all over except the wailing and gnashing of teeth.

I got back home under my own power so it didn’t qualify as a DNF. But I walked the last three miles. Ignominious? Yep. But I learned a good lesson. The eighteen miler I did the week before went so well that I didn’t treat the twenty with the respect it deserved.

I’m going to do twenty-one this weekend, but I have some energy gels and food bars to take along. I’ll also have a better plan and execution. Thanks for reading. Don’t forget our wounded warriors and the Semper-Fi Fund. Small donations all add up. $10 or $20 is fine and a big help. Click on the link and help me get to $10,000 by November.

Time to Shift Gears

I had to shift this training program into a higher gear last week. Learned the JFK 50 Mile Ultra has entry qualifications. I was not aware of this until they posted registration on their website. I can do it, but it’s going to be tough. The cleanest way is to run a sub 3:45 marathon before the first tier registration period ends on May 10^th. The cheesiest is to get a charity entry. There are options in between.

I hurled off this bridge in the '04 NYC Marathon

The training has been progressing well, but I haven’t been focused at all on speed -- just getting in the miles. My personal record for 26.2 is 3:42, but that happened in 2002. Yikes, ten years ago. Last time I ran that distance was 2004 and my time was 4:01 – but I got sick and hurled off the Willis Avenue Bridge going into The Bronx and that slowed me down.

All along, I've been pointed towards the New Jersey Marathon in Long Branch on May 6^th, which means the schedule needn’t change. I’ll just have to run at close to a personal record time. I'm pretty confident I can do this, but it ain't going to be easy. My charity, The Semper Fi Fund is not one of the “official” charities of the JFK, so in order to get a charity entry, I’ll have to do some weaseling around, and that doesn't thrill me.

Saturday I ran 18 miles and Kim and I had another Village Café lunch. The big accomplishment was hitting a wall at about mile 16 and defeating it. The course ended a few blocks past the hill on Monument Avenue in front of Bon Secours Hospital. I hit the wall before the hospital, and busted through it as I came up on the hill. The last mile was like a dance. Duane Allman’s guitar on Soul Serenade was the soundtrack.  

Today I flipped the training schedule from afternoon/evening to morning. I went out the front door somewhere between 5:15 and 5:30. It was still dark. Saw zero cars on Manakin Road until the subdivisions starting disgorging the first leavers just before 6.

Running before dawn is like running in the night, and you know how I like running in the night. But running before dawn is safer because there’s fewer cars. When you run before dawn, you feel like you really own the road. You can run right down the middle. Right on that yellow line. It feels odd running in the center of the road in the daylight. Even if there’s no traffic. But in the dark it feels close and intimate. Perfectly natural.

Switched the diet as well as the schedule. I’ve been reading that fat burns more efficiently than carbohydrates. Supposedly, if you can train the body to burn more fat it can lead to higher endurance because the body has a far larger supply of fat than could possibly be burned in a 50 mile run. So we’re trying to reduce the carbo intake and increase proteins and fats. We’re a house full of carb junkies here, so it’s not the easiest thing in the world, but lots of beans, eggs, dairy and chicken lead the way.

I also discovered a supplement called Vespa – which means wasp, not motor scooter. This is supposedly a synthesized amino acid substance derived from the Asian Mandarin Wasp which has the highest endurance of any living thing on earth. I don’t know if it really works, but I seem to perform better and recover faster and easier from long runs when I’ve taken it than when I haven’t. I’ll report back after I’ve used it longer.

Saturday is the Irish Sprint 10K in Quantico. It’s about half and half roads and trails. Finishing will get me a guaranteed entry to the Marine Corps Marathon in October. Since I haven’t timed any of my training, I have no idea what finishing time to expect. Stay tuned for results. Sunday. I’m going to go twenty miles from home down to Shockoe Bottom – the old historic district in Richmond.

While I’m doing all this running, your job is to make a donation to the Semper-Fi Fund for Injured Marines. These injured heroes deserve your support. You can make a small donation, a large donation or a regular donation – seriously, you can set it up to hit your debit card for ten bucks (or more) each month. You won’t even notice it. Thanks a lot. See you next week.

Running for a Sailor Sandwich

I was supposed to run the Richmond downtown trails system Saturday with the Richmond Road Runners Club. It rained like hell Friday and the forecast called for it to keep coming down through Saturday morning, but the guy who organizes these monthly trail runs said it was going off rain or shine. Feeling macho, I told him I would be there.

I only ran those trails once -- the James River Scramble a few years ago, and there were so many others running that I didn’t have to know where I was going. People say the trails can get confusing, so it’s best to have someone show you around if you want to make a habit of it. I wanted to learn my way around, yet the more I thought about running on wet rocks and mud the less appealing it seemed. That damaged ankle is still only about 85% and I can’t afford another two week layoff.

I chickened out at about 3AM. They have one of these trail runs every month, and maybe April will be dryer. Certainly the ankle will be stronger. I felt like a wuss for bailing on the trail run, so I decided a nice sixteen mile road run would be sufficiently grueling but less likely to screw up the ankle again.

Last week I ran fifteen miles west to Goochland Courthouse and got some killer Pizza at Rocco’s. I decided to go east this time -- down into Richmond. Kim offered to drive out after an hour with some refreshments and fluids. I said, “After you pick me up at the end, we can go find lunch.”

She said, “We can go to the Village Café and get some onion rings.”

I’m sensing a theme here.

The route isn’t difficult to follow. Walk out the front door, cross the field, run south on Manakin Road. At the end of Manakin Road, turn left onto Route 6. Run twelve more miles and stop. I laid it out on MapMyRun.com and the overall elevation trend is flat and downhill for the first nine miles to Lauderdale Rd and then a steady uphill for three solid miles to Parham Road. After that it’s basically flat to the end.

If you’ve actually driven it or run it, you know it ain’t that easy. I don’t care what MapMyRun says the “trend” is, that road has lots of rolling hills all along the way. They’re right about the three solid miles of uphill from Lauderdale to Parham, though.

What a difference a week makes. The hills on that route did not seem as tough as the ones heading west. I took a four minute break when Kim came by with water and a banana. I even walked a couple of times on those long excruciating hills, but I felt pretty darn good at the end. Last week I could hardly stand at the end, this time I stretched a little and walked up and down the sidewalk waiting for my bride.

Village Café is a five minute drive from where the run finished. It’s on Grace Street a block off Broad in the VCU neighborhood. I changed in the truck while Kim drove. The streets are narrow and there’s always a lot of activity on that corner, but we found a parking spot on the street right in front of the place.

I’ve said before that barbecue is an art form here in the south. Well, they really know how to fry stuff, too. Village Café is superior at deep frying stuff. If you have a cholesterol issue, you don’t want to go within ten feet of the place, it’ll probably clog up your arteries just walking past the door. Every now and then, though, you’ve got to go for the grease.

That's the booth, don't know the girl

The woodwork on the booths in this joint is all authentic arts and craft style hand carved and inlaid designs. The place has a really funky vibe. On the weekend it’s mostly students. Weekdays you can add a good ration of business types and there’s always a sprinkling of street people. The tables were all filled when we got there, so we found two spots at the bar.

They have about a dozen tap beers and plenty of bottles. I’m an IPA fan and Kim had a Bock. I didn’t even need to look at the menu. Hell, I just ran sixteen miles, I’m having a sailor sandwich and onion rings. Kim got a sausage sandwich and some of my onion rings.

The onion rings have beer in the batter. They’re almost the size of a saucer and one person can’t eat a whole order. Except maybe as a main course. Guy Fieri from Food Network’s Diners, Drive Ins and Dives was there a few years ago and filmed them making the onion rings. But he said the best thing on the menu was the Stromboli. He’s a dope; it’s the Sailor Sandwich. 

Sailor Sandwich  (Not usually open-faced)

You know what a Sailor Sandwich is? A Richmond original invented during WWII, it’s corned beef, knockwurst cut lengthwise and melted Swiss on greasy grilled rye bread. I can’t believe I ate that whole thing. Kim only ate half her sausage sandwich. I had three beers and Kim drove home.

It’s two weeks ‘til the Irish Sprint 10K at the Marine Corps Base in Quantico, Virgina and I’d like to go there as one of the top fundraisers so far this year. Won’t you take a minute and make a small donation to the Semper Fi Fund for Injured Marines? It’s secure and easy do – just click on this link. $10, $20 – whatever you can spare for this important organization. Thanks.  
  
Finally, if you enjoy reading this stuff, or if you agree that the Semper Fi Fund is a good cause, please click on the "follow" link at the top of the blog so you don't miss any good posts. And we'd also be grateful if you would re-post on facebook and pass it on to your fiends! 

As a Rule, Central Virginia Doesn't Get Pizza

As a rule, Central Virginia doesn’t get pizza. That isn’t a value judgment or a mean criticism – just an observation. Pizza isn’t indigenous to Virginia, barbecue is. Pizza is indigenous to New York and by extension, New Jersey. Chicago thinks pizza’s indigenous there, too, but it’s not. That stuff in the pan may be good to eat, but it ain’t pizza.

They have a “pizza” place here in downtown Richmond that everyone raves about. I won’t name it because I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. People use superlatives when they talk about it. They say it’s The Best. Let me tell you, from someone who knows pizza: It sucks.

Doughy, chronically undercooked, overpriced and soggy. They heap too much cheese and too many veggies on it. Then they don’t cook it hot enough or long enough, so all the wet percolates down into the crust. Blech. I can get a 99 cent slice from a window on the corner of 9^th Ave and 41^st Street by the Lincoln Tunnel that puts that stuff to shame.

So why does everyone around here think it’s great pizza? Simple. For the most part, it’s all they know. If you're brought up on Dominos and Papa Johns, I guess it seems ok. It’s like you think that barbecue joint in Manville, NJ is great barbecue, but people around here would probably find it repulsive and inedible.  Barbecue's an art form in Virginia, and that's a story for another day.

Anyway, to all my moaning and griping about no decent pizza, my neighbor, Adair, tells me there’s not one, but two good pizza joints in Goochland Courthouse. Now, you have to picture this town. It’s the county seat of a quaint little rural Virginia county where there are seven horses for each human. They do have a Ford dealership, a supermarket and a feed store. Their claim to fame is Cy Young winner Jason Verlander. Hard to believe they would have good pizza there.

When I started planning my ultra-marathon training, I wanted to get in some point to point runs. You can only run in so many circles before you start to crave something more interesting. Since Adair told me about those pizza joints, I figured Farm to Goochland would make a good long run with a pizza reward at the end. I laid it out on MapMyRun.com and turns out it’s exactly fifteen miles. Perfect.

The first five miles were along Miller’s Lane which you know is one of my favorite running roads. But once I hit River Road, it was virgin foot territory. Oh, I have driven it plenty of times, but seeing the terrain from behind the wheel of a Teutonic tarmac hound and from the shoe-leather express are two very different perspectives. There are a lot more hills along that stretch of road than I remembered. I admit I walked on some of them.

Kim met me around mile seven to reload the fluids. I had come around a bend and looked up at a sudden and steep hill that was preceded by a narrowing of the road with guardrails on either side. I looked back to see if I was going to get squeezed by traffic and there she was in the dually. A perfect excuse to stop and rest before taking on the climb. She agreed she’d come back out in an hour and meet me in town. I don’t think she saw me walk on that hill, but I did.

By the time I reached the Route 522 intersection, my quads and glutes were twitching and my legs really did not want to work. I never got winded, not once. Cardio has always been a strength. Six weeks from now my resting heart rate will be about 48 and blood pressure 90/55. I’m sure we’re not much above that now. Anyway this was the farthest I have run since 2004, and I was not ready for it. But then again, you never are ready for the first time – you just make it happen.

I got up the hill past the bridge that cuts across the James River to Powhatan County and was excited to see the speed limit drop to 35. The end was near. There’s two parts to Goochland Courthouse. The old part and the new part. The old part comes first, and one of those pizza joints is in the old part. As I ran past, it looked deserted. I was really disappointed and worried that I shouldn’t have done this on a Sunday.

Much of running is mental, and I was in the mental stage. The stage where your body says, “I wanna quit,” and your mind has to refuse. So I really wasn’t worrying too much about pizza I was just trying to keep going. I saw a sidewalk on the other side, so I crossed the road by Wells Fargo. The County Administration Building was straight ahead. Fifteen miles was just past it on the right, and I could see my stopping point so I just kept going.

I beared (bore?) to the right at the fork in the road past the Admin building, went a few yards and quit. It really felt wonderful to stop. My legs were very weak and did not want to hold me up. I thought about sitting down, but when I looked over my left shoulder, there was Kim. Perfect timing as usual. We’re good like that. I actually had to pull myself into the truck.  

I have news for you: Adair's right. Rocco’s Pizza in Goochland is not just the best pizza I’ve had in nine years of Virginia, It’s damn good pizza for anywhere. Remember those bar pies we used to get at Bucky’s in Finderne or Chitch’s in Bound Brook? It’s like that. Thin crispy crust. About 14 inches across. Cooked in a really hot oven, so you can put a lot of cheese or veggies on it and it stays crunchy on the bottom.

We had really cold draft Buds, too. Kim had a cheese steak she said was fine. She said the real test for her is the eggplant parmesan. Maybe I’ll go out there Wednesday night and get her an eggplant parmesan and me another Hand Tossed Rocco’s Special for take out. I’ll drive this time, though.  

OK, I’m Back

After laying off with this bum ankle for 10 days, I’m back.

We had a little snow on Monday, so I tried out the cross country skis. I have a long standing rule: I don’t buy cheap sh*t. But about 20 years ago – I was still in Jersey -- we had a good snowstorm and I wanted to try cross country skis. There was no place to rent them, so I put my rule on hold and bought a cheap set-up from Kenny Hollingsworth at Pelican Ski Shop in Whitehouse. Hagan skis and Salomon boots. Some no name poles. Got the whole outfit for $119. I still have them and they still work fine. Go figure.

So I dug the skis and stuff out of the boiler room in the basement, laced ‘em up and headed down the lane and up towards the Deep Run show grounds. There was only about four inches of snow, and that was just perfect. Making a track in deep snow is a pain in the butt and I just wanted to have little fun.

Drivers on Manakin Road did plenty of rubber-necking as I glided up along the fence in front of Bantry Hill’s cow pastures. They aren’t too used to seeing cross country skiers around here. I was being cool and just ignored them. Figured let ‘em gape. I did ok, too. Got the step-glide step-glide knack back pretty quickly. And boy it sure was exciting to be back on skis (any skis) again.

I was only out there for about forty minutes. Once around the show grounds, past the schooling rings, slid through the barn areas and down to Virginia Equine and the Clubhouse. Then I kicked off the skis, jumped a fence and came back through the woods. Skiing through the woods is fun because as long as the snow is fresh, you can go right up over logs and brush piles. And I did. When I got back to the house the ankle was fine. Still felt fine Tuesday, so I ran four miles with no problem.

I went out this morning to try the seven mile loop that I wrecked my ankle on a week and a half ago. It was a bright shiny morning with temps in the forties and no breeze. One of those perfect joyful mornings that make you glad to be on the sunny side of the sod.

Here's my rocky ditch

It was a delightful seven miles. No one came near to running me off the road. Maybe the neon orange vest had something to do with it. Nice rolling terrain had me grunting a bit on the up-hills and got to stretch the legs out good on the downs and flats. Got a good close-up of the rocks I was rolling around in the other night, too.

Saw Dave Hudnell in his truck when I got to the Hermitage/Manakin intersection. He once told me he almost hit me one night when I was running on Manakin Road in the dark. In the broad daylight, he just waved and cruised by.

I’m going to jump right back into the training schedule at the point I should be if I had no lay-off. That means I’ll do fifteen miles Sunday. I have been looking forward to this run since I first set up the schedule. I laid out a few point to point routes in the program, and this will be the first. I’m going to run from the farm out west to the town of Goochland. I keep hearing about a really good pizza joint out there that I'm dying to try and Kim’s going to meet me for lunch.

Don’t forget to click on this link and make a donation to support our injured heroes. The Semper Fi Fund assists injured and critically ill Marines. These unbelievably brave people have put their lives on the line for our country, and we have an obligation to make sure they get all the care they need. Every little bit helps - $10 $20 or more. If you’re in the 99%, give what you like. If you’re in the 1%, give what you can. Thanks.   

I'm Going To Pay For This Tomorrow

I woke up this morning and my entire body felt oddly…. weak. Not painful, just weak. I did a bunch of sets of man-makers last night cause I still can’t run on the bad ankle and I wanted a tough workout. I think my muscles are insulted because I treated them with such contempt. 

They’re sad, depressed and pouty so they didn’t want to move as I laid there in the bed. My mind is stronger than my body, so I got up, ate a few Advils and got to work. With twenty-four hours to think about it, tomorrow they’re going to be pissed.  They’re going to inflict pain back on me, and I am not looking forward to it.

I found this man-makers exercise on the internet. Supposedly Navy Seals do it. I don’t know if that's true because I don’t know any Navy Seals and I have discovered that not everything on the internet is true.

Start out with a pair of dumbells. The metal kind, not like the slowpoke in front of you at the supermarket writing a check for $4.38. I used 25 pounders.

So you have one in each hand, and you do a squat-thrust. Then do the push-up. Then while still in the plank position, lift the right hand up to the chest and back. Repeat with left hand. Hop back to the squat position still holding the dumbbells on the floor. Rolling your weight forward, lift the dumbells and reach back between your legs as far as you can. Bring your hands forward and stand while curling the dumbells up to your clavicles. Finish it by pushing the dumbells straight up over your head. Repeat.

There's a bunch of variations on this exercise. Here's a video of one using kettlebells...

This is really a full body workout. I did reps of four with a one minute recovery and I was really huffing and puffing. I did maybe six sets and then a half hour later did another six. It was far tougher than I thought it would be. I could have used lighter weights, but the next lighter ones I have are ten pounders, and the bar was not high enough off the floor so it crushed my knuckles. If you’re a Navy Seal or a Marine, you probably think I’m a wuss. I’ll get over it.

If I was being chased by a pack of wild dogs, I could probably run on this ankle. It feels structurally sound but it’s still pretty sore. I’ll try to do three miles Saturday. Can’t afford to lose too much time because there’s a marathon May6th and I have only one week of fat in the training schedule.

Don't pay too much attention to my whining. I really do have some perspective. This bum ankle is just a minor annoyance compared to what our injured service members have to deal with every day. Jump on my bandwagon and help support these injured heroes through the Semper Fi Fund.

Some Say I'm an Idiot

Some people said I’m an idiot and deserved what I got. Others said, “It was inevitable, you should have known that was going to happen.”

Well, I don’t think it was inevitable and I certainly don’t consider myself an idiot. The jerk who almost killed me the other night is definitely an idiot, though. Here’s what happened:

I was scheduled to run seven miles and the Manakin - Hermitage loop was an easy choice. In order to keep things interesting, I decided to run it by starting out south instead of the usual northbound direction -- see, we play these silly games to keep from getting in a rut.

It was after 6:30 but I probably should have gone out a little bit later. It was still rush hour-ish. There were more cars on the road than I like, and they were acting odder than usual.

I am hard to miss when running in the night. There is reflecting material on my waist pack, my vest and my shoes. I think some of those drivers thought all that reflective stuff was a target to aim for because they came awfully close. Several found me interesting enough that they blasted me with high beams to get a closer look. More than once I got so totally high-beam blinded that I had to step off the road and wait for them to go by.   

Plenty of those drivers weren’t paying any attention at all. I don’t know if they were racing to get home in time for Entertainment Tonight, or just arguing with their wives over what to have for dinner. I do know they were not looking for runners on the road. You can see me fifty yards away with all that reflective stuff, but a lot of those cars would come right at me then suddenly see me and swerve in a panic.

You can run the same route a dozen times, but if you go the opposite direction it’s like being on a completely different road. The up-hills and the down-hills are all in unexpected places. On the opposite side of the street the footing isn't the same, and the terrain off the side of the road is unfamiliar too. It probably would have been prudent to have run that opposite direction once in the light.

Well over five miles into the run, I had passed the golf courses, passed the gas pipeline and was coming up on the little house with the doggie obstacle course in the side yard. The road was straight out in front of me with a slight hill crest. I could tell a vehicle was coming when its lights lit up the treetops. As it topped the hill it looked like a big SUV and didn’t seem to have high beams on.

In spite of all the traffic I felt really good. I was moving at a decent pace. In the zone, I didn't want to stop. As the SUV approached, I put my head down so the visor of my cap could block the glare from its headlights.

After running a few times in the dark facing traffic, you get so that you can read the headlight shadows. You can tell where a vehicle is without having to actually look directly at it. This monster was coming right at me. He had plenty of time to see me. There was no traffic from the opposite direction so nothing prevented him from sliding over into the other lane. But he just kept coming.

In a few seconds, It became clear the truck was not going to give me any room. I was right up on the edge of the pavement and the headlights were now so bright that I couldn’t see anything. All along that road, there’s about an eight inch shoulder of granite dust and crushed gravel between the edge of the blacktop and the ditch.

I stepped off the pavement and brought my left foot down onto the shoulder, but it wasn’t there. Instead, my foot landed on a jagged softball sized rock. The ankle immediately rolled to the outside. I tried to recover and hop off it, but my center of gravity was already over the ditch. I went down on hands and knees. I had gloves on, and much of my weight went onto my hands which was fine. My right knee and shin hit those rocks though and got all banged up.

Bear in mind this ridiculous ballet unrolled right there in the dazzling brilliance of that SUV’s headlights. As I bounced around in the rocks, its brake lights flashed red; then the driver hit the gas and was gone. I know the shithead saw me go down.

If I’d stepped off the road five feet sooner, I’d probably be fine. But the spot I picked was right near a driveway. In order to keep weeds down, the homeowner lined the ditch with grapefruit-sized rip rap as it approached the culvert that passes under the drive. Lucky me.

I popped back up right away. My left ankle and right knee were both barking pretty loudly. I couldn’t put any weight on the left leg, so there I was hopping around on my right foot at the end of these people’s driveway cursing, “Son-of-a-bitch, son-of-a-bitch, son-of-a-bitch.” Someone looked out the front door then switched off the porch light. Southern hospitality, I guess.

It wasn’t the first time I rolled that ankle, so I knew what to expect, but the immediate instantaneous pain is so bad when it first happens that it always feels like someone cut your leg off. I bent over with hands on knees, caught my breath and tried to walk on it. That was not going to work. I also happened to notice the bloody wetness on my right knee. “Shit,” I said. This is going to screw up the training, I thought.

I really did not feel like trying to hop and gimp home under my own power, so I pried my mobile phone out of the arm holster and called Kim. Hoped she’d answer. Girl’s notorious for not answering her phone. I got lucky; she answered right away. I told her some dope ran me into a ditch and I couldn’t walk. Could she come and get me? Told her where I was. She said she’d come right away.

Kim really is the best person on Earth. She showed up in about ten minutes – I was that close to home. As I climbed into the truck, she hands me a fistful of Advil and a Diet Coke. How can you beat that? She dropped me at the back door and went down to the indoor riding ring to finish her lesson.

Nice Foot, Eh?

I hopped in the backdoor on one leg and found Stephen in the kitchen, crushing ice cubes on the counter in a zip-lock bag. What a great team I have. I stumbled down to the family room, piled some pillows on the ottoman, tied the ice bag to my foot with a dish towel and swallowed an old pain pill left over from the last time Kim got beat up by a horse. Stephen poured me a glass of wine.

I know, I know, you’re not supposed to mix alcohol and pain killers but I believe in moderation. One pain pill, one glass of wine. Definition of moderation.  

This vignette played out on Thursday night. Today’s Saturday. The ankle is still petty swollen and discolored, but I’ve been icing it and elevating it. When I wrap it in an ace bandage and wear a good shoe, I can walk pain-free, as long as I concentrate on going only straight forward and don’t pivot or twist.

I figure I’ll have to quit running for a week. I found a cross-train exercise I can do though. It’s called Man-makers. Google it; it’s a lot tougher than it looks. 

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They deserve our help.