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Body Damage

This post will be a reminder to you, gentle reader, that this blog finds it's origins in the typical fare of self-justification. I write this for me, not for you. Sit back, relax, and be happy.

  1. Eight days ago I felt a slight tightness in the outter bridge of my left foot. It started sometime in the beginning of the day which I had kicked off with a hard bike ride to try not to be too late to my final Minister-of-Care training. Perhaps I pushed too hard on those pedals, because by the end of the day there was a pretty noticeable burning sensation while walking more than a few paces. It grew more pronounced the next day and ran it's course for three days before showing signs of letting up. I could bike fine, but forced myself to slow down my walking and accept a slight limp to avoid more strain on the strain. After another three days of recovery, there was (and is) no sign of the problem. Possibly tomorrow I'll be putting my first run in since before it happened, to see how it reacts.

  2. On Friday I was jogging up the stairs to my apartment wearing sandals without any socks. My mind got ahead of my body and I snagged my foot on one of the steps. Left foot again. Turns out I managed to almost rip my big toenail halfway off. About half of the nail is halfway attached to the rest of it. oops! Rather than completing the damage, I've just been careful when I put socks on or pull on pants that I don't snag the nail.. I'm just letting it be, letting it think it's OK, until it decides that it's ready to move on to the next life. I've kinda been wondering if the friction against shoes when I start back up runnning will hurry along the process or not.

  3. Today when I got home from work I decided it was too great a day to pass up a run along the lake... except I left my shoes at work for tomorrow's run. So I decided the next best thing would be a hard bike ride even farther up the lake and then back south. I loaded up a water bottle and a little hip bag with stuff and took off. The wind wasn't too rough so I was able to clip along at a good speed. About five miles up I was coming up on a black teenager who was skateboarding in the opposite direction, and he randomly decided to cross over to the other side of the path right as I was getting to him. At the last moment he noticed how fast I was going and decided he needed to get out of the way. He ditched his board, letting it go right while he went left. Neither were off the path so it was basically him or his board. I hit his board at probably 15mph and went tumbling on the asphalt path. I hopped right up of course, with a burst of adrenaline, but adrenaline doesn't stop blood from escaping through skinned skin. The guy was really apologetic and I was really quick to shrug it off and tell him not to worry about it. I'm usually too quick about that. I just kinda got my bike over on the side of the path and worked on figuring out what to do next. A friendly Indian family of three stopped for a second so the Dad could tell me exactly where I was bleeding (the side of my head), so he could confirm for me that it wasn't gushing even though there was a fair amount of it, and so they could offer me the use of their cell phone. After graciously declining, I used my water bottle to clean myself up as much as possible. Of all things, I hate making a scene. I sat in the grass for a few minutes, washing away blood and "listening to my body" for more extensive damage, of which there was thankfully none. The same for my bike. I got back up on it, and biked at about 75% the original speed back towards my apartment. Got a few stares along the way but I survived those, and managed to get up to my room w/out a problem. After cleaning with soap, water, peroxide, and applying ice to the side of my face, the toll is one cut eyebrow, one skinned forearm, one skinned elbow, one burned elbow, one bruised shoulder (burned just enough to keep blood in but allow some puss out), one skinned ankle, one slightly swollen side of face, zero broken bones, zero sprained muscles, and zero concussions!

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