Near Nature Mishap

I thought I'd come up with the perfect plan to run safely in the dark, early morning, but I didn't make a good escape plan.
After I fell and broke my nose running in the dark along the street, I had to take about three weeks off from running. My husband, my doctor, my parents, my non-running friends all urged me to stop running in the dark. My running friends, of course, understood the lunacy of running. It was only a matter of time before I started again --  like when the swelling went down in my knee and the bandages came off my nose.
So I made a plan to walk or ride my bike to the high school track. It's about a mile away. The track has no potholes and a rubberized surface. I've gone a couple of times this week, easing my body back into the routine of running.
This morning, with the thermometer hovering at 39 degrees, I pulled on running pants, a long-sleeved shirt, a fleece, gloves and a headband to warm my ears. The one-mile walk was the coldest part at 5:30 a.m.
I pushed the turnstile and walked into the high school football stadium. Lights lit up the entrance, and the home side of stands, but the rest of the track was in darkness. Since I live in town, it's not pitch-black like it would be out in the country.
I stood for a minute scanning the track for any movement. Many times, other people are running on the track or doing sit ups in the middle of the football field or running up and down the steps of the stadium. I didn't see any movement, so I started around the track, taking some time to enjoy the brightness of the stars above me.
I hoped to run three miles, working my way back up to the five miles a day I was running before my fall.
I started in the outside lane -- number 6 -- and each time I rounded the quarter-mile track, I moved in a lane. After a mile, I started moving back out to the next lane.
I'd completed two and a half miles and was passing near the entrance to the track when I saw something moving along the concrete. The whiteness shown in the darkness and I immediately thought it must be an opossum with its pinkish-white chubby body meandering along. I decided to stamp my foot to scare it and send it away from the track, back toward the exit.
Then, as I got closer, I realized the bright white was bushy fur along the back of a pointy-nosed skunk.
Yikes!
I picked up my speed away from the entrance to the track. I tried to glance back to see if the skunk turned away from the track. I figured it was interested in the trash cans or maybe food that people had dropped under the stands, but if it followed the trajectory I'd seen, it would come onto the track.
As I rounded the corner headed back toward the entrance to the track, I pulled my phone out of its holster and turned on the flashlight app. I swept the light back and forth across the track, watching for a flash of glassy eyes or a stripe of white. I ran past the entrance for the final time, not spotting the skunk anywhere.
I thought about the fleece and the head band I'd taken off and hung on the fence near where I'd seen the skunk. If the skunk got scared, my fleece and headband would be so pungent, I'd have to throw them away.
I pictured tomato juice baths and needing to restraighten my hair over and over.
Even if I didn't need to return to the entrance to get my clothes, there was only one way in or out of the track. If the skunk stayed around the entrance, I was captured. I was a prisoner to the skunk.
I looked at the fence as I ran around the track. The fence was high all the way around. I could climb on something to get to the top of the fence, but the drop on the other side would probably give me knee or ankle injuries.
I slowed to a walk before the entrance. Still scanning with my phone flashlight, I saw no sign of the skunk. I peeked around the trash can by the fence, certain the crafy skunk could be hiding there. I grabbed my fleece and headband and cautiously walked forward -- my light swept back and forth across the blacktop and the turnstile. With no sign of the skunk, I raced out the gate and into the open parking lot.
I had escaped my near-brush with nature and another running mishap. I imagined for a minute that I'd disturbed the skunk and it had sprayed me. Upon hearing that story, I'm sure people would just shake their head and suggest I take up swimming at the YMCA instead.

Running Fail

I was making fairly good time during my run this morning. It wasn't 6 a.m. yet and I had finished half of my five mile run. I turned onto a dark side street and wondered whether the headlamp I was wearing over my hat really helped me see the road better.
But I didn't have time to ponder it for long because my foot landed in a pothole, my ankle turned and the momentum propelled my body forward to a landing with a crunch, on my nose.
I heard the bones crack.
My nose? Who lands on their nose?
I didn't stay on the ground for a second because I could feel the blood gushing. My nose grew thick with blood and mucous, and I coughed to catch a breath. I picked up the fallen hat and headlamp, but stayed bent over at the waist so the blood would not pour down my front. I let the thick, red drops pool on the asphalt as I reached for my phone.
I carry my phone with me on runs because it has my music and it keeps track of my miles. Today, it offered me rescue.
About two miles from home and bleeding profusely, I dialed someone who I knew would have his phone close by no matter the time -- my 16-year-old Tucker.
"Hello?" his sleepy voice went up on the end in a question.
"I think I broke my nose. Can you come get me?" I said, my voice clogged as I tried to breath and talk at the same time.
"You broke your arm?" he asked.
"No, my nose."
I told him my general location then said I would go back to the closest main street so he could find me. I stood on the corner, still bent over dripping blood.
An early morning walker passed by.
"Did you lose something?" she asked in the darkness. I must have looked like a basketball player searching for a lost contact lens on the court.
I told her an abbreviated version of my accident and she handed me a tissue to wipe up some of the blood. That little tissue didn't stand a chance.
Then the woman walked on.
I kept glancing down at my hand, my knuckles. They felt sore, but I didn't see any blood where I had scraped them.
Within minutes, the knuckles had swollen to a walnut-sized bump.
"Oh..." was all I could say. I felt miserable but refused to give in to moaning in pain.
The bleeding subsided enough to allow me to sit down on the curb without coating my shirt in red.
I saw a car a block away slow at the intersection then creep forward. I swung the headlamp I held in my hand as a kind of signal light. My phone rang, and I told Tucker to turn toward the light, but not in a death and dying kind of way.
The car raced down the block then and I limped into it. My knee was skinned and bleeding too.
I climbed in the car and Tucker recoiled in shock.
He handed me towels. "Can you wipe that off?" he asked. I'm sure he meant to be concerned rather than disgusted.
I didn't realize at the time that I had scraped the skin off my nose, so bleeding from the outside and inside.
"I think I might have broken my hand too," I said motioning toward the swollen knuckles.
"Oh, God," he said. Right then, I ruled out any sort of medical career for him. He drove home like I was in labor and might give birth in the car.
My poor husband had just pulled the car in the garage 4 hours before, having driven home from New York. Still he pulled on clothes and accompanied me to the Ohio State emergency room, all the while predicting he would be accused of spousal abuse.
About a dozen xrays and five hours later, the doctor sent me home with some pain killers, antibiotics, a wrapped hand (just bruised not broken), and a referral to an Ear Nose and Throat doctor for follow up on my broken nose.
 So I'm here at home now, with a black scrape of asphalt on my thumb reminding me of the tumble I took this morning and a pounding headache
What have I learned from this experience? Maybe not as much as I should have. I asked the doctor before we left, "So, I don't usually fall on my nose. How long until I can run again?"
"Give it at least today," he said with a pat on my arm. "Truthfully, it's all going to depend on when you can breath well enough to run again."

Take A Hint

Two things I'd like you all to remind me of next time I say that I'm going to quit running or take a break from running:
1. I always gain weight when I quit running
2. It takes forever to get back in running shape (able to breathe while covering miles)

This is not my screenshot.
It is fromhttp://www.therecapp.com/

For the past week or so, I've been running again. Well, walking and running. At first I started walking a block, running a block.
In Florida, along the beach, I didn't have that option, and then in my parents' neighborhood, the blocks might stretch for miles, so I decided to follow the App on my iPhone -- iMap My Run.
I would walk a tenth of a mile then run two tenths of a mile.
I thought I was getting better. This morning I even ran four tenths and half a mile before stopping to walk, but it was right around that time that my iPhone began showing the locations of bus stops.
Okay, I can take a hint that I'm moving a little slow for the iPhone.