2014 In The Rearview Mirror

Every neighborhood has its shrine.

A year ago I was pulling out of a crash dive of injury and illness where I wasn't running at all. It also occurred to me that I took the wrong ten years off from ultras. No, I didn't wind up with cancer like one friend of mine. I just got served with reality.

By March, I was progressing well enough to hold down a 20-mile run—until I broke my left wrist in an airborne fall on a trail that ended with a loud SNAP. Thanks to Rainer and Dave, who splinted me, then drove my whiteout self to Huntington Memorial ER, where it got cast up. And to Catherine Schulz who was my advocate in the ER, who could talk doctor-talk with the ER MDs. Few are this lucky. Would've been nice if I could've washed that arm before it went into the cast, but it didn't go all rank on me.

In the Huntington General ER, an hour after I fractured my wrist.
I'm being clown-slapped to keep my mind off the break. The drugs came later.

Broken bones are completely new to me. My progress wasn't just set back by the 5 weeks in a cast—add another 5 weeks to what my conditioning was like before this all happened. Then imagine toeing the line at the BTR50k 3 weeks after the cast came off. Nobody missed their podium-call on my account. A summer of ass-kicking out on the trails and at various races followed.

Fast forward to Jan 2015. Its been less than nine months since I seriously began to re-train for ultras. Everything has changed. But it beats sitting at home digging loose change out from my sofa.

Alison survived cancer, a double mastectomy, and a bruising run-in
with the US medical-insurance complex. I just fractured my wrist.