Drops of Blood on the Sidewalk

Do you ever see drops of blood on the sidewalk and wonder what happened? (I've seen this more times than you would think) Well, today I have a story to tell about one such trail of blood.

I went out for my long run at 6am this morning. It was a beautiful morning and I was excited to be running again. I even saw some friends right after I left my house, and waved to them.

Just before I got to the 1-mile mark, I looked both ways to cross a street, and my toe hit a seam in the sidewalk or something and I was suddenly falling.

It's funny how when you fall it feels like it's in slow motion.

At first I'm thinking, "Ok, I got this, I got this!" But then I'm still going forward.

I think, "Ok, I might have to put my hands on the ground a little to stop myself."

My hands hit, and I'm still going. They are now digging into the pavement and I'm still going down to my knees.

I was practically laying on the ground when the forward motion finally stopped. (I must have been running really fast! Hahaha) And a car was driving by right as this happened.

I was mostly embarrassed at first. I sat up and just tried to breath and pull myself together. I could keep going, I just needed to calm down.

Then I looked down and saw blood pooling and trickling off my hand. I looked at my other hand, and there was blood dripping off of it too! No, I was not going to go on. I was going home!

I slowly got up and started walking home, and I could tell I was leaving drops of blood all along the sidewalk.

I walked for about 2 blocks, then decided I wanted to run again. I closed my fists to try and keep the blood in and ran the rest of the way home. I was fine really. It must have been quite the site to see a girl running down the street with blood on her hands. Especially in my neighborhood... Nobody said anything, though. I passed two guys walking, and just smiled at them to let them know I was ok, but they hardly looked at me anyway.

I thought it was good that I had at least spared my knees since they didn't hurt at all.

Here are my nasty looking hands:

I made it home 22 minutes after I left.

With a little help from Mindy, who was awake reading in her room, I cleaned myself up and got some bandages on.

It was only 6:45 so I mustered up some courage and went back out to finish my run. (Cuz I'm hardcore like that!)

I had planned on trying for 9 miles today, but with this little hic-up I didn't have time for that anymore. I decided to shoot for 6. The rest of my run was pretty nice, but by the end I realized that my knees hadn't been completely spared because they were getting kind of stiff and sore. One of them got scraped up a little bit, but not even close to as bad as my hands. Good thing I was wearing capris and not shorts. Too bad it wasn't colder or I would have been wearing gloves too!

I finished with 6 miles in 1:04 which is pretty good considering 2 minutes of that were spent sitting on the sidewalk not quite crying...

Now I get to rock the fishnet gloves (bandages) Madonna-style for the rest of the day!