My usual Monday evening run is nicknamed the “Ballet Run” … not because I run it wearing a tutu but because whilst my daughter has her ballet class I do three loops around the ballet school … which equates to about 10k with some faffing. This blog is … I am sorry to say … another dull boring running blog post about the ballet run …. bear with me dear reader ….
This time last week on the Ballet Run I was just finishing loop 2 when what appeared to be a grain of sand tripped me up and I went tumbling over. … it must have been a grain of sand because clearly I am not clumsy enough to trip over nothing !! As I looked up from the tarmac, along with various expletives, I thought …this really hurts !! A few people stopped their cars to check that I was ok but I waved them on by smiling through gritted teeth whilst managing to stem the flow of blood from my hand and by saying I was fine. I found myself casting my mind back a few years and recalling caring for a retired Nurse who fell and sustained a huge and deep … and I mean huge and deep …. skip flap injury to her knee …. she told me she was ok and I could just put some paper stitches on it !!! Of course she wasn’t ok and needed a little more than some steristrips but I thought of her whilst waving passers by onwards. There is perhaps some reflection here about the stoicism of Nurses … but lovely reader … that is not the moral of this particular tale.
Having managed to get my self upright again, I hobbled to my car in some considerable pain. I had jarred my arm and shoulder, there was blood (but I perhaps may have exaggerated in the previous paragraph as I didn’t need to heroically tear my clothing up ….reminiscent of Bruce Willis in Die hard … and create a tourniquet) and my knee was rather impressively swelling up. I felt quite proud that I managed to get up and pull myself together and perhaps it’s worth reflecting that three years ago before I started running and was obese and unhealthy I was a lot less tough. There are some days when I run that I feel tough, strong and ready to take on the world and this is something that seems to have crept up on me and I am finding pretty darned amazing …. but noooooo avid reader that is also not what this blog is about.
After a few days of rest, where I put my knee up and let the swelling go down and rested my arm as much as I could (have you ever tried to “rest” an arm!!!?) I decided that I needed to get back to it and opted for a gentle 5k on the treadmill. It was slow and my arm ached a bit but I did it!! I was just a teensy bit proud of myself that I got knocked down but I got up again (cue Chumbawumba) and although I could definitely reflect on how this is applicable to nursing and being a Nurse and how we need to be able to pick ourselves up … but you’ve guessed it wonderful reader … that’s not what this blog post is about !!
And so we come to the crux of the matter …. why I have written yet another boring old running blog …. for the non runners amongst you (& perhaps even the runners) this is a good a sedative as temazepam and highly recommended bedtime reading! The fact is that this evening was my first time back doing the Ballet Run, on my first loop around and my first visit to the site of that fateful fall I noticed that I did indeed fall over a grain of sand ! There was nothing there … no pot hole, no tree root, no uneven paving …. nothing !! And so the purpose of this blog post darling reader is purely and simply to serve as a reminder to this runner to pick her bloomin feet up !!
