And then she fell

It happened. God punished me for making fun the woman taking a pee on the Mt. Marathon Bowl trail last night.

My penance? I fell on the last mile of my 18 miler. One minute I was cruising, fast, on the downhill, and the next I had a rock sticking out of my knee.

Ouch!

But it gets kinda strange because the cut is in a perfect half moon shape. Get it? I made fun of the woman mooning me and then I fall and get a moon-shaped gash.

A coincidence? I think not.

But back to the run. I did 9 miles out and 9 miles back on the Lost Lake Trail. If you've never run it, the trail goes up to the top of the peak, about 2,100 feet around mile 6, and then starts going down the other side. So if you run out and back you get the pleasure of running uphill twice.

One last ridge to the top

The devious thing about this run is that the uphill is so gradual that you often don't even realize that you're running uphill. I know this. I've run this trail enough that I should realize: Hey, the reason I feel so plodding is that I'm running up a small mountain.

But I forget. I wonder why I'm going so slow. I worry I've lost all of my training benefits. I struggle. And then I glance to the side of the trail and notice that it's a long, long ways down and it's like: Oh yeah, I'm running uphill.

Then, around mile 6, the hill finally (finally!) crests and it's down to the lake. It's such a relief and of course I stupidly didn't stop to think: Hey, if I'm running down now, I'll have to turn around and run up on the way back.

Three miles of up and down but mostly down later, I turned around and started back. I came to this:

Snow, in July. Kinda fun yet kinda depressing.

The lake is really beautiful but my pic is all awful and lopsided--sorry.

And then back up to the crest from the other side and it's all downhill, baby, for 6 glorious miles through alpine forests and tall grasses with lupine and all sorts of wonders.

Down, down, down .....

View of the mountains across from the trail.

You can fun fast on the downhill, and I mean you can fly through the wooded area, where the trail is soft. Closer to the bottom, the trail becomes rockier and rougher, and that's where I fell, less than a mile from the trailhead. I was flying.

And then I wasn't. The odd thing is that it seemed to take me forever to hit the ground. I know it probably took less than a second, but I felt suspended in midair, and so many thoughts went through my mind. How could I think so much in such a short amount of time?

Regardless, I caught myself with my hands and managed to absorb the bulk of the shock in my wrists (poor dears, they do so much for me), and once I pulled the rock out of my knee, it didn't look so bad. So I started running this little limpy run because I was NOT going to walk the last mile. I passed three hikers right before the trailhead and they stared at me funny and I thought, well of course they're staring, the way I'm jerking and limping.

When I got to the trailhead, I discovered blood running down my leg. It made me look tough, but it also hurt so much on the short drive home that I almost veered off the the emergency room.

Now, hours later, it's not so bad. I'm going to have a nice scar and won't be able to run for a few days but I think I'll get by without stitches.

Moral of the story: She who laughs, falls.

Running: 18 miles
Reading: Zone 3 literary magazine
Writing: Must I?