Knock on wood I don't think I've ever been injured in a fall.
Knock on wood I don't think I've ever been injured in a fall.
Slipped and fallen on ice many many times. Usually just get a headache.
Fell on a trail run. Rolled out of the fall and got back on my feet. Must have hit a root and separated my shoulder. That's an injury that doesn't heal quickly.
I was crossing a street one mile from home when I hit a median while looking left for traffic and smashed my face. There was a hospital in the next block, and I was tempted to head to the emergency room, but I went home instead and just accepted the road rashes face.
I was scheduled to be a parent volunteer at my daughters elementary school the next day and I was long overdue so I decided not to cancel. I was on lunch duty, dishing out food, with my face scraped to hell. The kids at that age were great though. Most just asked “what happened to your face”. Middle schoolers would have eaten me alive.
Track session mid summer, was a group of us, about 4, doing 400m reps. For some reason the football (soccer) players who used the field in the middle had put some kind of fake turf walkway across the track, I guess to walk across it from the changing rooms in their boots. When we got to the walkway which was only about 2 feet wide, some people in the group jumped it and one of them caught their leg on mine, I hit the track really hard and as it was summer was in shorts and scraped off half of my knee. It didn't scar though. It was more horrible to fall at sprint pace than the times I've fallen say in a field or at a slower pace.
Two main falls:
1. trail run, felt like i was smashing the downhill, got delusions of grandeur like I was running like a beast, then tripped over and scraped/bruised forearm, forehead and back when trying to roll out of the fall.
2. Wanted to run in a public park from road/ car park. Saw some people looking at me. Took two steps at start of run trying to look cool. Fell over on second step and smashed knee on curb between road and trail along with shoulder and back of head. Got up straight away and resumed run. Pretended it didn’t hurt but as soon as out of sight rolled over in agony. Physical injuries healed. Ego hasn’t.
I've fallen lots of times but one of the more memorable times was running after a big dump of snow. It was pretty slippery so I was taking it easy but as I came around a corner I stepped on a patch of smooth ice and my foot just went out from under me. My hip hit the ground pretty hard and I lay there for a moment wondering if I'd done any damage. As I lay there an old lady using a walking frame came past and said "You should be careful dear, it's slippery out" before continuing on her way.
Fortunately no damage apart from a bruise but felt a right idiot.
I was running in an urban area and for some reason there was one of those yellow plastic bands that holds copy paper boxes together on the sidewalk. I didn't see it. Somehow both feet ended up inside of it. All of a sudden I was on the ground as if someone tackled me and I didn't know what happened. I landed on my chin and ended up getting stitches. Someone who lived on that street saw me on the ground trying to regain my senses and let me come in and clean up the blood. (Thank you kind stranger!) I held paper towels to my chin as I ran a couple of miles back to my car.
Running in college, I wasn’t paying attention and tripped on I ever sidewalk and wiped out. My knees and palms got pretty torn up. The funny part was I didn’t have any first aide supplies so had to go into CVS looking like I had just gotten in a fight- which I sort of did- with the sidewalk.
I've always enjoyed running in the fall.
Could still feel it 2 years later.... wrote:
Fell on a trail run. Rolled out of the fall and got back on my feet. Must have hit a root and separated my shoulder. That's an injury that doesn't heal quickly.
Similar to above. Coming down the last hill at Van Cortlandt Park. I'm lucky because this was before they put up fences. I rolled but quickly got up on my feet and continued racing. I only scraped my hands.
I was doing my daily run and somehow without knowing how I clipped my foot and it threw off my stride. I fell forward. I put out my right arm to break the fall and it ended up torquing my body backward to the right while driving my elbow up into my chest. I ended up- for that moment- with a large road rash on my leg, bloody and a sprained wrist. But I also found that I was having some problems with breathing- it hurt. And two days later my right knee blew up to the size of a basketball.
In the end, here is the score- sprained wrist, road rash, 2 broken ribs, and a torn right medial meniscus with damage as well to the medial synovial plica, both of which had to be corrected or removed via arthroscopic surgery (the surgeon was Dr. Payne, for real...) . Was off my feet for 2 weeks, came back to run and found that the absence of so much knee tissue affected my ability to handle impact forces and took up bicycling, which is what I now do to this day.
I usually run in the dark - often a 3:30 AM start - so I must have the most experience here.
I fully sprawled out three times that I remember including once tripping over a dead carcass of something.
But the best was when I suddenly saw a skunk a few feet in front of me. Pretty sure he was turning to spray me and I stopped short - turned - tried to sprint away - fell - threw my water bottle several yards away in the process. It was the beginning of a long run and a few hours later I was sitting on a boardwalk bench resting. Some people saw the blood on me (I forgot about it) and asked if I needed an ambulance!
I was running on the track early am. It was dark and I caught some rolled up turf that was sitting on the side of the inside lane. I went flying and landed on my right quad and ripped it open. Never have I cried if I tripped and fell but this one I did.
With help from my friend we went down to the local gym. One of the guys looked at it and said I better get that looked at. His dad was a surgeon and it looked pretty bad. I ended up tearing my quad fascia. Took 5 years for me to run somewhat normal again. The doctor said it was the kind of injury that football players get.
Went down in a track race and got full-on spike shredded from a competitor on my arm. 23 stitches on 3 main gashes plus ancillary track and spike plate burn.
Got clotheslined by a support cable attached to a telephone pole running at night. One second I was running, the next thing I know, I'm lying on the ground. I don't know if I was knocked out or not but I suspect I might have been.
Crashed on unseen ice under a thin layer of snow. Suffered a concussion and I lost maybe 10 seconds of memory--one moment I was running down the road in a normal manner, and the next I was on the ground with the earth spinning wildly underneath me and my ears buzzing. When the buzzing and spinning stopped and I went to get up, I met a stabbing pain in my shoulder and could feel the ends of the broken humerus grinding against each other. I walked home carefully (luckily only about 1 km), called 911 and got an ambulance ride to the hospital, as I was in way too much pain to drive myself. The fractured humerus didn't require surgery but took several months to heal completely.
I fell for this hottie from my running club. Now she has my last name, my kids, my house and I get to sleep in my car.
April 1964: Family was moving by car from Flint, MI to San Jose. Mom, Dad and 5 kids I was 10 years old, the oldest. We were in a Buick. Four boys in the back seat. Lil sister 2years old in the front. No seatbelts!!. Had cousins in Tucson about my age so naturally had to have a race of about 100yds over an uneven rock strewn field. I tripped over something(or one of my cousins tripped me) and went down hard on my left elbow. Huge gash and took a bunch of stiches. I had to take giant pills(either anti biotics or pain I dont remember) the rest of the trip. I had huge tonsils and would take me ten minutes of trying to get these down. I cried practically the rest of the way to San Jose because of the pain and these pills. Spent a couple days at my Uncle's(see link) in LA. The smog didn't do well with me in my condition and threw up a bunch of times. From LA to San Jose it was slow as there was no Hwy 5 in 1964. We took Hwy 99 through Bakersfield, Fresno etc.. Wasn't a freeway so tons of stoplights through those and the other small towns.
Was running near the former Amazon HQ in Seattle at night on a poorly lit sidewalk. Didn’t notice that some tree roots or something had cracked and pushed up part of the pavement about two inches. Suddenly I’m flying horizontally like Superman with my arms extended straight ahead. Landed hard on my chest and stomach, which knocked the wind out of me. Rainsuit was destroyed, ended up all road rashed and bruised. Walked the three miles back to my apartment, was too shaken up to run.