I was suppose to be doing the Spartan Beast Race in Vermont today. Plans changed when I took a spill on 40” box jumps last Saturday. What I originally thought was a little scrap, actually was (as the doctor described) fillet to the muscle. When I saw how deep it was, my first thought was, “How am I going to take care of it so that I can do the race.” Crazy glue was my first great idea (no I didn’t do it yet).
A few hours later, I was showing it to a friend of mine. I was able to move my skin like a sleeve. I flexed my toes and the muscle would move and the skin would stay in place. Wow, that’s kind of cool, but it might be a bigger problem than I thought it was. So I made the decision to go to the doctor. Probably one of my better ideas. When the doctor saw it he said, “Oh my God that looks terrible.” I started to laugh. I said, “You’re a doctor, you see stuff like this all the time.” He said, “I’ve only seen one other that bad and the guy was in a motorcycle wreck.” Personally, I’ve seen worse stuff, so I’m a little confused. Personally, I think it sounded much worse than it was. That is until the doctor told me that I can’t run in the Spartan, because if I do than I will probably end up with a staph infection. I have known people who had that and I definitely don’t want it. I guess I will have to overcome my own stupidity and listen to the doctor instead. In the past I have blown off doctors advice when it came to injuries and participating in sports. Torn cartilage, messed up back, torn ligaments, and a number of things that I never told anyone about (that I would have been advised to pass up). I honestly have no regrets about continuing to compete. I didn’t end up in a worse situation and I overcame the pain. This time it’s different. I’ll do a different race. I’m disappointed but I have to move on.
I was supposed to be meeting up with my brother David who had also planned on doing the race. I still decided to come out here to support him. The closer it gets to race time the more bummed out I get. It’s a good thing that I didn’t bring any of my gear, because there is a good chance that I would convince myself that I would be fine doing the race.
Part 2 of this story is listening to my friends talk about how, I can’t jump and that I am uncoordinated and that it looked funny when I slammed into the box. I already know all of these things so they aren’t telling me anything new. So, I will get even with them by kicking their asses in our workouts, which won’t include box jumps.