PAIN

This past Monday, while on a run in the wee hours of the morning, I took a pretty nasty tumble and have been in quite a bit of pain since. I have a huge hematoma on my left hip and the pain has radiated out into my glutes and hip flexor. I also have a good deal of pain on the right side of rib cage and right shoulder from when I hit the ground. It's a damn good thing It wasn't worse because nobody would have known where the hell I was. Patti was still sleeping and I never told her I was going for a run or even where I would be running. Plus the morning was cold and snowy so if I had been laying out there for anytime it could easily have turned into a bad thing.

Fortunately, I have a tolerance for pain and after lying on the ground in a dazed state for short while, I was able to get up and complete my run. However, as the day went on my rib pain worsened and became rather uncomfortable. I know I didn't break anything because I've experienced broken ribs from a mountain bike crash and this pain is nothing like that. Even with that incident, I rode for another three days with two broken ribs and cartilage damage around my sternum. It wasn't until I got off my road bike three days later, in tears, that I went into the doctor and had x rays taken.

So, back to the present...on Tuesday I had a break between my morning and afternoon conferences at school so I decided to come home and go for another run. Sore as I was from my fall the previous morning I decided to give it a try. You see, I am not the sharpest cheese on the cracker, and often times refuse to listen to my body. So with a stiff hip, sore ribs, and shoulder I headed out for what was going to be an easy forty-five minute run. I got about thirty minutes into it and had to stop because the pain in my ribs was just too uncomfortable, plus, trying to work out in that condition is just no fun. I would end up taking Wednesday off from exercise and now, here I am on a rainy Thursday, I have the day off, and I'm contemplating what to do with myself.

What puzzles me about this whole pain issue is the fact that... When I have such a high tolerance to physical pain...Why am I such an emotional wimp when it comes to matters of the heart?

Right now I'm trying to decide how I am going to put my body through more pain today. My options are ride, run, or hike. Hiking...obviously would be the least painful of the three, but I sure would like to do the other two. I'll let you know what I decided to do a bit later.