Bit Of A Break

First: here is an interview I gave late last week.

Second:

On my run Saturday morning I'd just descended Green Mountain and was about to leave the Chautauqua meadows dirt for the mile-long paved jog back to my apartment when--on an embarrassingly benign stretch of smooth trail--I caught my left toe on something and instead of just faceplanting (and merely scraping/bruising my forearms) like I usually do, my right leg came through to catch my fall, which would've been fine except that my right knee then hyperextended violently with an audible crack and I fell to the ground. As this happened I had a few involuntary screams owing to the fact that I'd just ripped my hamstring and IT band off the fibular head, along with a sizeable chunk of bone. Of course, I wouldn't really know that until later after I got x-rays and whatnot, which apparently also show some potential damage to the tibial plateau.

(Misplaced hunk of bone floating around there above the fibular head.)

With many thanks to a lot of friends--most notably Jeremy Rodgers for calmly and efficiently dealing with my desperate phone calls and emails on a weekend--I'll be seeing an orthopedist here in Boulder later this week to determine the full extent of the damage (via a CT scan) and to see what it's going to take to get this puppy healed and back to strength.  Preliminary prognosis (given no ACL damage, which is possible) is 6-8 weeks on crutches and then another 4+ weeks on top of that before I can start thinking about taking a running step.

It's still kinda hard for me to grasp the fact that I'm going to miss the entire summer of spectacular weather, but it's not really worth worrying about facts that are now out of my control and I definitely realize that, unfortunately, there are plenty of people out there with even more debilitating and serious concerns than a blown-up knee.  Doesn't mean it doesn't still suck, though.