the pursuit

So yesterday night I was so excited.  I’ve been running for a year or so, seriously training since March, with the idea of running the Hartford marathon in October.  Recently I’ve been doing my long runs with a couple who are training for the San Francisco marathon in July, which has been great because the husband is a great route-planner and the wife and I are like, identical pace-twins.  We did ten miles, no sweat; 11, piece of cake.

They were all signed up for the Brooklyn half-marathon today, so I signed up too, a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve been super-excited about it, telling all my friends, checking the weather forecast hourly, etc. etc.  Last night, the only thing missing from my race-day checklist was sunscreen.  Zack had to stop by his office anyway, so we decided to take a nice walk down there and get sunscreen on the way back.

And this is what happened.

In case you can’t tell, that’s a two-inch gash.  In my head.  Held together with four stitches.  How did this happen, you ask?  Well, it involved me, excitedly bounding down a short flight of stairs and cracking my skull on a nasty bit of low-hanging ceiling.    It didn’t even hurt, really, just stunned me, but then when I held my hands to my head I realized it was gushing blood and I probably wasn’t going to get to run today.  I have to say it was one of the most disappointing moments I have experienced.  Top 5.

But, as my dad says, I could have sprained my ankle and not been able to run for weeks.

Still.  Bummer.