Run the Bases

For the past five weeks, I’ve been working at a day camp for kids. Part of my job calls for councilor meetings every Friday, where we play games and conference/complain about the week we’ve had.

At yesterday’s meeting, we were playing a game that should be familiar to most readers, called Run the Bases. The game is simple enough; basically, two people throw a ball to each other over a particular stretch of land. An unsuitable large number of their friends (in this case about thirty councilors) try to run between them. Either of the ball passers may decide, at any moment, that they would rather hurl the ball at a friend– at which point said friend gets beaned. It’s a game that provided me hours of entertainment as a child.

Running being one of my few skills, I decided that I was invincible. At one point, I found myself making a close turn around one of these ball catchers just as he caught the ball. Determined not to get hit, I took off at a dead sprint. My eyes, however, were still locked on his hateful hand, clenched around the tennis ball. I turned my head forward just in time to see the horror on a fellow councilor’s face as he hurtled at me.

We had the cartoonish kind of collision with our chests together and our arms held out behind each other. In the moments before we hit the grass, it must have looked like we were about to hug.

And now, the relevance of this story: I must have turned my knee outward right before the collision, because my fellow councilor/ball-dodger managed to hit the side of it just right with his own. Both of my knees were pretty banged up after the ultra, and even after two weeks of healing, this hit was enough to renew some of that damage.

It’s certainly not catastrophic, and it came at a time when I don’t have to run lots of miles. In fact, I could only laugh about it afterward. After running 50 miles on asphalt, this is how I get hurt.

The Walnut

Behold the walnut.

Smaller than my fist and colored an unassuming green. An agent of my destruction.

The trees of Bethlehem, overburdened with such fruit, have been dropping them to the earth. Some land in the street where they blacken into pulpy dreck. Others roll through the grass, as if finding the perfect place from which to strike.

On last Thursday’s run, I stepped on a walnut of the latter kind. Or, I should say, black walnut; my research revealed an apt name for such a shrouded ambusher. I ended up stumbling in such a way that made me tweak my groin. Tweak, not pull. I think.

It’s been a problem during practice the last few days, especially on hillier routes. Which will be fine if it just allows me a good race at Lehigh this weekend. Paul Short, after all, may be my last chance to PR in the 8k.

Training Drama

I had hoped that I would never have to write about my nerve injury again. But, alas, I spoke too soon when I said that the numbness is gone.

I went for a short run today, and I had that same ghostly feeling in my leg. It’s not spasming or weak like it was a month ago, but that weird feeling is still there. I’m conflicted right now on how to go about training. I can’t rest too much or I’ll go into my season lacking base training. But if I haven’t rested enough, than I may end up on the injured bench.

I realize that there are greater problems in the world, but training means a lot to me. Since I’ll be a senior next year, my last season of competitive cross-country is coming up. I’d like to end my college racing career on a good note. After the years of steady improvement, I hate the thought of fizzling out.