There's been a bit of an injury going on for the last week or so that had me out of commission last weekend and kind of hurting this week. Last Wednesday I was doing my "long jog" for the week - 3 miles - when I tripped on the big floppy bow of my shoelace and fell in the middle of the street.
It's actually kind of funny, I was on Liberty St by about 17th avenue, roughly here:
A few houses before the spot where I fell there was this group of African-American folks in the front yard. One guy was digging with a shovel in the front yard and there were about five other people hanging out and drinking beer around him. When I fell the guy digging the ditch goes "DAMMMMMMNNNNN!" and everybody else was like "oooooooh - snap!"
I had to laugh myself as I sat there for a few seconds to get my bearings. They asked if I was okay and I gave them the thumb's up sign as Molly Wood and Tom Merritt kept talking over my ipod.
I got up and started walking a few blocks. I knew my knees were both skinned up and probably bleeding real bad and that my arm was hurt but I couldn't really tell right off the bat if I was just hurting because my hands were skinned up or what. After walking a bit I went ahead and finished the run.
I was actually feeling pretty good, until I stopped running to cool down. It was at that moment that the pain in my arm really intensified and by the time I got home I knew something was very wrong. I drove myself to the urgent care place about five minutes before they closed (bet they loved me for that) and had some x-rays done. Turns out I don't have anything broken, it's just a bad sprain.
Basically what they told me was not to splint my arm or use a sling or anything since that would cause my arm to lose muscle mass and range of motion and to go ahead and just take it easy with the arm till I feel better. In practice this has meant walking around with my arm held at a funny angle and taking lots of ibuprofen, and icing it as much as I can. I've gotten a lot of range of motion back over the last few days but it's still in pretty bad pain. I'm not sure how long that's supposed to go on for.
And yes, I have gone jogging again. Yesterday I ran two miles with my floppy bows tucked under the laces on top of my shoe. Believe me, I was checking them out every few blocks.
