It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's .... Michelle?

My long run last Sunday was .... let's say, eventful. So there I was, around 5:00pm running on a glorious Boston Sunday afternoon, smiling as I'm thinking about the marathon which will be here before I know it. Smiling because I'm feeling great, my calf feels great, no twinges, no tightness, no nothing. Just running and feeling great about it. Life is good. Then ... I'm flying! Literally, superman arms outstretched, FLYING through the air, as both of my feet have apparently been lassoed by a rogue cowboy. Then KABAM! I come screeching to a halt as my superpowers do not engage and I do not, in fact, take off into flight. SMASH! BOOM! BAM! I'm lying face down on the shoulder of Rt 3, wondering what the HELL just happened to me. I roll over (and get onto the curb so I'm not soon to be roadkill) and see a circle of thick wire about 1' in diameter tangled around my feet. I really was lassoed!!! I didn't see it under some leaves and must have kicked it up with one foot, and then trapped myself in it as I took the next step.

Ouch.

After the stream of obscenities stop flying from my mouth, I recover my composure and notice my new, awesome running tights (ironically the very tights I say make me feel like a superhero - I actually find this funny a bit *after* I recover from the fall and start running again) have a HUGE rip in the right knee. And through that rip, I see what looks like ground beef in the area that should be where I'd be seeing my knee. Ugh. That can't be good.

Nothing appears to be majorly hurt, so I get up and start walking a bit to make sure I didn't seriously bang up anything. I'm VERY VERY thankful that I had my running gloves on - my hands would have been trashed without them. But both knees hurt pretty badly and my left elbow hurts. Well, I'm 3 miles from home and I know nothing is REALLY damaged, so I continue to walk a bit to feel better then just start running again. Eventually I start laughing thinking about what had to have been a SPECTACULAR fall to witness.

I make it home as I note that my supposed 6 mile run ended up just shy of 8. Oooops!!!! But I really did feel great and honestly underestimated the loop. Let's see how much my coach beats me up about it.

It took some time to peel my tights off as they were stuck to both knees - again, ouch. My right knee was DISGUSTING. Just a huge mess of a scrape. My left knee was also impressively scraped, but nothing compared to my right. And my left elbow was banged up as well. So, Sunday night, there I sat, watching the Patriots stink up the joint, on the couch with ice packs ace bandaged to my knees jacked up on Aleve.

I was fine - sore knees for a few days but nothing major. My tights, on the other hand, are goners. I'll try to mend them. Or not. It did look sort of bad a$$ to have a ripped knee. At least that was what I was telling myself later in the run, when I was lamenting the potential loss of my beloved superhero tights.

Although, they didn't ACTUALLY make me fly, now did they? Harumph. Superhero, schmuperhero.