God's Comic Relief

Here's the irony of me: I'm accident prone, just not when I'm exercising. In fact, as long as I'm running, biking or swimming, I've got a much better chance of not getting injured. On the other hand, I'm really bad at walking. In fact, I don't much like walking - I'd much rather run. I usually fall down quite a bit when I'm walking. And I often mistakenly walk into objects, like walls or sides of buildings, for instance. And tripping? Oh, it's amazing I haven't fallen down stairs and broke my neck yet. I trip daily. Even if there is nothing to trip on. I'll trip on oxygen. Maybe some random molecules bounced in my way. Like it or not, at some point throughout the day, I'm face-planting.

The other day I was hiking in the mountains with Cat and a few other folks, and my shoe laces got caught on the opposite shoes. Have you ever heard of such a thing? Essentially all was going nice and fine then in a sudden surprising split second, my feet got tied together. It's like I am a play toy for God. I'm God's comic relief. I hopped up and down a couple of times to try and keep my balance but that only worked out for about the ten seconds preceding me falling face first into the dirt. Everybody else got a good laugh out of that one. And God? I'm sure She was rolling in the aisles Herself.

But that's not even as lame as I get. One of my favorite moments happened a few months ago as I was at the pool getting ready to go swimming. Before I even dipped but a toenail of a pinky toe into the pool, I pulled a muscle in my back while putting on my swim cap. I didn't even start stretching. I was in pre-stretch stage. That's the sad thing about me, just the act of stretching can injure me. I have to stretch before the stretching.

I've always been injury prone like that. I remember when I was ten years old I was at a neighbors house with a bunch of friends listening in on the neighbors phone conversation with his girlfriend. Well, he heard us listening and so ran after us with the intention of laying down a beating. I was the last one out the back door. As the door slammed shut, it took a bunch of my finger with it. A few minutes later, I noticed my white shirt had turned red. I ended up getting a few stitches. Fast forward a month and its time to remove the stitches. I get out of school early, and mom takes me to the doctor. Stitches get removed and mom drives me home. As we pull into the driveway, I see the school bus pulling up down the street. Wanting to run down and show all of my friends that my stitches were removed, I rushed out of the car.... and slammed the damn car door right on my other hand. Same finger, other hand.

If it's not one thing, its another. As I said, God's comic relief.

I haven't been running lately because my left achilles tendon has been in pain. I've rested it, I've iced it, I've stretched it. I've done everything you're supposed to do. After not running for weeks, today I decided was the day to go out for a short slow run. So I did. Just my luck, my left achilles is fine, but my right achilles is killing me.

Time to fly to Kona now. Maybe the excitement of Ironman will cleanse me from injury.
But I wouldn't put my money on it.