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Sunday, November 12, 2006

Where the Sidewalk Ends

Tonight was not a good run.
First of all, I didn't really feel up to 15 miles, but I gave myself a mental talking to and decided that whether I felt like it or not, I needed to get it done -- that's what training for a marathon is about; it's hard and sometimes you don't want to do it, but you do it. So I started it.
At about mile 6.5, the sidewalk came to a stop and I was left to run in either the grass or on the road. Because the road is a busy one and there was no shoulder there, I thought it best to run in the grass -- which was really more sand, rocks and patchy crab grass than soft, plush golf-course grass. I'm not used to running on such uneven ground, and then an overhead streelight went out and I was momentarily plunged into darkness.
That's when I tripped over a sizable rock and went tumbling into the dirt. The fall wasn't as bad as the one last summer (when I skidded across the asphalt and splashed into a puddle), but I scraped my knees and palms and found myself covered in fine silt. I got back up and decided that even though my knee was throbbing and my big toe (which stubbed the rock) was aching a bit, I was gonna run on.
But after about a mile, and when the sidewalk resumed, I was feeling achy from the fall and mentally out-of-whack. So, at the next pay phone, I stopped and called my husband and asked him to come and fetch me. In total, I ran 8 miles. And I curse that patch of land without a sidewalk.

3 comments:

teacherwoman said...

Oh man. That stinks! You had the drive to get out there and do the 15-miler and it just didn't work that way! I hope you plan relax the rest of the night!

Erin said...

That stinks! What a bummer. Luckily you had the money for the pay phone so Jerry could come rescue you. Maybe you should plan the next big run on Friday when you get out of work early? Hopefully it will be cooler and then maybe the agony of thinking all weekend about that long run won't be so bad because you already did it? Either way, 8 miles is 8 more than I can run!

MNFirefly said...

OWWWWWW! You poor thing.