June 29 - Double Dipsea

AM: Double Dipsea trail race, ~8 miles, DNF

I suffered my first DNF today. Nothing about it feels great as of this writing, but I'll explain what happened.

In an effort to get in a solid, hilly long run, I decided to go up to Marin to run the Double Dipsea with Varner and Reed: a trail the three of us have run many times since together since the three of us moved to California last year.

The Double Dipsea, like the "single Dipsea" trail race, is age-handicapped, meaning that the older people get as much as an hour head start, dropping down in age and gender groups until the 39-and-under men take off last. Obviously, that means that runners of different abilities are doing a lot of passing in narrow, sometimes single-track sections. Now, I'll say that I've never been a huge fan of the idea of age handicap races, but I was trying to stay open minded, and I knew that this was part of the job hazard when signing up for the race.

About three miles into the race, I was feeling surprisingly good. Reed and I made a mutual pact to start conservatively and were reeling in guys from our starting group because of our patience early on. The heat wasn't getting to me yet, and I was passing a ton of people on both the uphills and downhills.

While skirting past some other runners on a narrow section of flat trail, a tree stump that was jutting out from the earth, right at thigh level, completely blindsided me just as I was surging through a congested area. It felt like getting hit with a baseball bat in the soft spot of my thigh, and I went down pretty damn hard: harder than any other fall I've had running, and I've fallen a lot. I took a handful of other guys with me, but fortunately no one else seemed to get hurt despite the narrow area.

When I got back up to my feet, a quick self assessment showed that despite an immediately swollen and bruised left thigh, I didn't break my femur, which legitimately was my initial concern based on my pain level. The bad news was that I couldn't really lift my left leg beyond a walk and I was still in total agony. Reed caught up with me, and after about 30 seconds of futile limp-jogging, it was obvious that my day was over. After about a frustrated mile of hobbling to the next aid station where I went through all of the various stages of grief, I swallowed my pride and took my first DNF in my 28 years. I assumed a DNF would happen to me at some point just based on the law of large numbers, but it still doesn't feel very good. I waited for about an hour for Valerie to come get me near Muir Woods, which gave me time to ice my throbbing leg and reflect on my abbreviated day.

As of this writing the afternoon after the morning's race, I still can't run. Given that I think it's just a bad bruise, my hope is that I'll be back to running in the next few days. The best case scenario is that I can get in a long run tomorrow. The worst case scenario is that I have a bone bruise or something worse, and I could be looking at an extended layoff. My guess is that it will be something in between. I historically have been fortunate in that I rarely get the usual maladies that sideline a lot of runners, so to have something acutely take me out of action is a little new for me.

I've fallen in races and runs plenty of times, but I've never not been able to brush myself off and push forward. I won't apologize for racing aggressively in a trail race because I think the risk of falling is just part of the sport, and you have to park your fears while still using common sense. However, clearly if I would have held back a little bit and waited to pass people, I probably could have avoided disaster but given up any ground I'd gained on the guys in my group. That's frustrating.

I will regroup. I will heal. I will run and race again. I'll even (probably) run the Double Dipsea again next year. But for now, I unfortunately have a busted up leg, an assortment of other bruises and battle scars all over me, and I don't know how long I'll be out of running. What happened today was an a bit of a freak running injury, so it's hard for me to assess that. Let's hope it's not too long.