Sunday the 22nd I was suppose to catch a flight to Spain to compete in my first international running race. Zegama is one of the most famous and challenging mountain races in the world and a race I have been dreaming of for years. I was signed up to race in 2020 before Covid postponed those plans and last summer I held off from pursuing running with my focus solely on ski racing and the winter Olympics. Skiing kept me from chasing dreams in running for the past ten years or so, but now I am all in and stoked to blend running and ski racing together. I don’t think it needs to be one or the other moving forward.
Spent the night in the ER. At least they put me on this bed and turned the lights off. I got about 3 hours sleep waiting to be seen.
Saturday before my flight I decided to go for a short bike ride to flush my legs. I had a really positive morning run so I thought an easy ride would be a nice way to get out of the house, sweat a bit, and relax before traveling all day on Sunday. Well on my easy ride I got bucked off my bike over weird rock, I spun side-ways off the bike and dropped off the side of the trail. The drop down was a few feet and I landed on my heel weird. I immediately couldn’t put weight on my foot. I knew I did something bad. I one leg-peddled back to the car, bought some ice on the drive home with my foot up on the dash, but the deed was done. I am lucky to say that the X-ray and CT scans showed no fracture, but my black and blue foot cannot bear any weight through it so I had to cancel my plans for Zegama and an awesome trip to the race with my sister and niece. I also had a leg full of cactus that I am still pulling out today.
The weekend wasn’t all bad. Before I crashed my bike I got to watch Jessica graduate with her Doctorate in Physical Therapy. As she received several awards I learned that she was 1 of 3 students in her class to have a 4.0. Rockstar! Her Physical Therapy expertise has been awesome this spring as I upped my running miles. She’s gonna be a good PT
This bad luck happened only a few weeks after my presentation on ‘Success through failure’ and it is really tough to keep the positive self-talk alive, but I know I will recovery and come back strong. Some of those great one-liners I had in my speech are quotes I am trying to tell myself right now. This is one of those humbling accidents… just as I started to feel really confident in my running form and thinking I had it all figured out I make a small mistake and now I am on crutches. Tough experience for sure. Hopefully each day improves and my next post has me back training. For now I am rebuilding my race calendar, working a lot from the couch, taking care of todo list items, and trying to stay positive. Lot’s of bad stuff going on right now in the world for perspective and I didn’t hit my head or hurt my spine so I have lots to be grateful for.
I can limp around on crutches so I got my sourdough brewing again. Only took one feeding to get it rolling, which was pretty crazy for how long it sat in the fridge getting funky!