Little + Big + Ouch x 2

Needed to burn off some stress, so headed over and did the Little Cottonwood Canyon Trail last night after work. My Garmin kept losing satellite reception for some reason, so just turned it off after a half mile and ran free. The mind and legs did better on the downhill and I am getting back to being able to pick my way down rockier sections again.

My right ankle has been hurting me a lot for the last week or so and I think it started after my run on this same trail a week or so ago. Maybe the uphill sections and downhill sections were aggravating my tendon injury from the previous year. I considered bagging a scheduled run the next morning, but decided I wanted to do it too badly and would go to a doctor afterwards, if needed.

Early this morning I met Leslie and Harold Peterson and some of their family (some who had never run trails before) and we went up to run the Wasatch Crest in Big Cottonwood Canyon. We ran from Guardsman Pass to the spine, then down to Desolation Lake and over to Mill D. A great 9.3 mile run. My ankle hurt each time I started a new uphill section, but then would quit bugging me.

After dropping Leslie off at her car, I then headed over to Brighton Ski Resort and did another 1.3 miles around Silver Lake and a little towards Twin Lakes, but the ankle was bothering me – so I decided I had better quit before I did something seriously wrong to it.

As I neared the bottom of Big Cottonwood Canyon I came around a corner just a few seconds after a bike crash had occurred. I used my Jeep to block the lane since the bicyclist that was seriously injured was laying half on the road and half on the gravel shoulder. Several people stopped to help until the ambulance arrived. I had blankets in the back of the Jeep that we used to pad her where the gravel was digging into her. Her name was Jennifer and she had done a double flip on the bike and had smacked her head, had road rash all over (probably the worst case I had seen) and was worried that she had broken her hip when it impacted the pavement at about 40 mph or faster. She wasn't bleeding seriously, so we tried to keep her talking and assess her condition before the Fire Department arrived. By the time they came we had a physician who was riding his bike up the canyon and a nurse who had been passing by also assisting. Poor woman – she was going to be hurting something awful. Her fiancée had wiped out trying to not crash into her, but he was walking around, although I had scraped off most of one butt cheek when he crashed. They are getting married next Saturday and she kept telling him she was sorry she had hurt him and that she would be injured for their wedding. We were all just glad she had a helmet on and had survived the crash.

Later this afternoon I got up to walk around the house and my ankle was hurting a lot – especially on stairs – so went by the After Hours clinic. They recommended I get an appointment with a podiatrist and put me back in my boot for at least a week. Probable tendon injury. Bummer.