Saturday is my usual long run day, but due to a possible trip to Boston at some point over the next 3-4 days, I wanted to make sure I got it done. The other thing that I wanted to accomplish was to do a long run in my Zoom Flys.

I figured the best place to do this run was going to be Waterville, because if my left calf or the shoes were not up to the task, there are many options to get back to the start without having to do suffer too much.

Little did I know!!!

I left JFK Hannaford and the temps were fairly warm (we are in a warming trend through Monday), I started fairly easy, but it was still sub 9:00 for the first mile. There is just something about the Zoom Fly that works well with how I run.

Going across the little bridge, I got this urge to find a tree and headed up the little closed road to the damn. Just as I was getting near the perfect tree, a downed log reached up and grabbed my toes!!! Down I went in a heap, wondering how in the hell, I ended up on the ground that quickly.

Unfortunately, when I went down – a stick decided it was going to try to come out the other side of my right hand. No, it did not make it, but as I was getting up, I needed to pull it out.

Wonderful.

I did a quick body check and that was the only wound received, so I proceeded to finish what I came to the woods for.

When I looked down, I saw red stuff dripping down my hand. Crap!!! It was bleeding pretty good, so instead of doing my run, I headed back to the truck to do some emergency repairs and triage the situation to see if I needed to shut things down or if I could get a few more miles in.

By the time I got back to the truck my t-shirt and shorts were pretty well covered in blood, but the bleeding seemed to have slowed up a little. I got out my trusty first aid kit, did an emergency repairs and stood around for a couple minutes to see how things were looking and how I felt.

No photo of the wound, just the repair job. I figured I did not want to gross people out.

I had been running very good, before I screwed up and while the hand was not great, the bleeding had stopped and…well you know me, I decided hey why not. I restarted the Garmin and wandered down the road again. I figured that I could get at least a couple more miles in.

As I was finishing up Silver Street, a car pulled into a driveway and the driver yelled out “Hey Harold”. It was my old trainer from Champions, we chatted for a couple of minutes got caught up on what was going on. It was good to see Judy again and I hope that she gets back into the trainer world soon, she was very good at what she did.

After that I just ran at a comfortably not quite hard, but not easy either pace until I got back on First Rangeway, where I picked the pace up a little more down through to Cool Street, until I finished the 10K.

I had thought about heading up around Colby, but when I got past the hills, my hand was starting to complain a bit more than I wanted to deal with, so I figured that getting a 10K in was pretty good – all things considered.

I went home and did a more complete cleaning, putting triple antibiotic on and bandaging of the hand. Luckily, the stick hit bone and didn’t go through, it is a little sore, but everything works and the bleeding stopped completely once I got through cleaning it out, so I will heal.

Not the run that I was expecting, but it was still a good run and one where I overcame a setback to have a better run than I probably should have. I still am not sure how the Zoom Fly will do on a longer run, that will have to wait for another day.

I guess I will see if I can get a longer run in on Sunday, since today was a little faster than usual.