[Aratlithiel]

Hope I don't discourage anyone from a new fitness regiment, but I can't help but share the following...

(I've cut & pasted this from an email I sent to a friend last week so excuse any context errors)

OK, so I hadn’t been feeling well for over a week (thought it was the flu, but no…) and was going bug-**** . I was feeling a little better and decided to take a short run. Now, I have a 5-mile trail that I made for myself in the woods behind our house that I use everyday and love because it’s really a tough work-out and very private. My husband (who was out of state at the time) has always hated it because he’s always afraid I’m going to ram myself into a tree or get eaten by a bear or something. So anyway, he really didn’t want me to go on the trail since I was still not 100% well and insisted I go on the 1-mile jogging/biking track at the park a couple miles away. Since I really wasn’t feeling great anyway (and, although I would never dream of admitting it to him I didn't think I could do 5 miles that day anyway) I figured I’d go there to make him happy & do 2 circuits to make myself feel better.

So I’m running along with Queens of the Stoneage blasting in my headphones (which, by the way, is the ONLY way to listen to that particular band – think it might be a law or something) when I get hit by a coughing fit…and I mean coughing FIT. I stopped in the middle of the track and proceeded to double over hacking and expecting a lung to come popping out any minute and would really not have been surprised if I coughed up one of my shoes at that point (now bear in mind that I had quit smoking some time ago). Now I’m getting dizzy and feel a cold sweat starting to break out and I think that if I can just get my sweatshirt off, then the fit will magically go away and I can finish my run and go home (so I wasn’t thinking too clearly, OK?). The only thing is that it didn’t occur to me that I needed to 1st remove the headphones from my head which were attached to the Walkman which was attached to my waistband of my shorts. Picture an idiot in the middle of a path with one arm out of a sweatshirt which is stuck over her head because it got tangled in the headphone wires which obstinately refused to become detached from the Walkman – all the while hacking like a seal with a chest cold.

But wait! It’s not over yet!

While I’m bent over trying to extricate myself from my rebellious clothing before I pass out from coughing into the sweatshirt that has taken on a life of its own and is trying to stuff itself further and further into my mouth, a biker (who wasn’t watching where he was going and was going WAY too fast for the track he was biking on) slammed directly into my side and sent me flying over a trash barrel and into a tree. Now, I’m not talking about some bad-*** dude on a Harley who mowed me down because he was too busy toking on his doobie to see me – no, no…I get run over by an accountant…on a bicycle…a SMALL bicycle…and a SMALL accountant…wearing the most ridiculous helmet I’ve ever seen.

3 cracked ribs, wrist broken in 7 places, broken collar bone, concussion, crushed knee-cap and nose broken so badly that I got to pick a new one. (Wish it were possible to break one’s boobs – I coulda used a new & improved set of those.) PLUS, it turned out that what I thought was the flu was actually pneumonia – try having THAT with cracked ribs!! So I’ve had plenty of Demerol days and Codeine nights. Apparently I’ve read 2 books and have absolutely NO idea what they were about.

And all because my husband insisted I go running at the park – for my SAFETY!! Can you say IRONIC? Give me a hallelujah, brother!