I was in Ft. Myers a couple weeks ago visiting family and preparing for the 305 Miami tri. I went to the beach at Cape Coral for a light training swim but it was a little hard to get in any good distance swimming in the marked area, so I decided to go out a bit further.
Not sure what the purpose is, but there were a couple of wooden posts sticking up about a hundred yards off the beach. I thought just for training, swim out, around the posts and back. Do 3-4 laps and that would be a decent training swim for vacation.
I go out the first time and no problem. I go out for my second “lap” and I’m coming up on this post that marks my first turn. But I have this disturbing habit of only being able to breathe over my right shoulder (I’m working on training to breathe over either but I’m not there yet). Since I was passing the post on the right, I lost sight of the post and thought I was farther away than I actually was. I thought the post was 4-5 feet off to my left, which I couldn’t really see since I’m only breathing over my right shoulder. In actuality, the post was only about a foot off my left shoulder so when I came up with my recovery stroke, I smacked the living shit out of it with the back of my hand.
I actually stopped at first just to make sure I didn’t break anything because it hurt like all hell. It wasn’t so much the post itself, but it was covered in barnacles and other waterborne crusty things. I ended up finishing the lap but I lost a lot of strength in the hand it it almost felt like I was getting water under the skin so I thought it best to cut my losses and call it a learning experience.
Fortunately, I didn’t actually break anything more than skin (and maybe a superficial vein or two) but it continued to hurt for several days. In fact, I still have a big scab that hasn’t yet healed.
Ultimately, that was about the only swimming I did the entire time I was out there since the swim leg was cancelled due to Man-O-War at the beach.
Oh well. Guess I’ll just have to do it again next year.
Currently out (and likely missing Oceanside) with achilles tendinitis due to my own stupidity. I have 2 kids so the schedule can very easily get out of whack. A few weeks ago I was home with two sick kids all week so had almost no time to train. The first chance I got to train I decided it was a good idea to double up on run sessions and combine a 60m Z2 run with 50m of 1k repeats. Unsurprisingly the 1k repeats on fatigued legs led to an angry achilles and now I can’t run at all. So yeah I’m an idiot.
A few times in my life i had terrible blisters that put me out of running for weeks. Last time was 1mo out before my A Ironman race. Learnt about other runners putting glue on their blisters. But i have not done it, way too scared.
What I’ve learned: socks matter. I used to run with rubbish socks.
Was running the loop at Cades Cove in the Great Smokey Mountains National Park (in Tennessee) when I came upon an area where a lot of cars were stopped and people were looking into the woods. As I got closer, I stopped running because I saw it was a momma bear with three tiny cubs and she was really close to the road. So, I stepped over to the left side of the road, and walked, as I watched these beautiful creatures. Unfortunately, I was so fascinated with the bears that I didn’t pay attention to the large step off from the edge of the pavement to the dirt/gravel on the side. Had the worst twisted ankle of my life. Unfortunately, I had told my wife to go on ahead (in the car) and I would meet her at the trailhead for a waterfall hike. This was another three miles away and there’s no cell service in Cades Cove. I tried walking but it actually hurt less to run than walk. But, as soon as I finally got to my wife, my ankle hurt so damn bad, I could barely put weight on it.
Ended up tearing my peroneal brevis tendon and need that repaired, along with a Brostrom surgical procedure. My running build up had been going so well, and I was planning to do the Quest for the Crest 50k, a week or two later. Unfortunately, all of that was ruined because I was fascinated with watching the bears and didn’t pay attention to where I was walking near the edge of the road.
People would say “see, I told you running was bad for you†and I’d have to remind them “uh, I actually did this while walking, not runningâ€
Not a pole, but I swam into a rock. You’re not alone.
Before any wild assumptions are made, I was in the Oakland Estuary (between Oakland and Alameda) helping my tri club with a practice swim before the Oakland Triathlon. Water was (unsurprisingly) black with no visibility, the rock was below the water, and just deeper the line of my arm/shoulder during the glide component of the stroke. Fortunately I just whacked my forearm and not my face.
Currently out (and likely missing Oceanside) with achilles tendinitis due to my own stupidity. I have 2 kids so the schedule can very easily get out of whack. A few weeks ago I was home with two sick kids all week so had almost no time to train. The first chance I got to train I decided it was a good idea to double up on run sessions and combine a 60m Z2 run with 50m of 1k repeats. Unsurprisingly the 1k repeats on fatigued legs led to an angry achilles and now I can’t run at all. So yeah I’m an idiot.
I have been dealing with this and have had amazing success with shockwave therapy. I was super skeptical but doing sessions every 5 days for a few weeks has healed it up.
The simplest & dumbest of all is the situation when you slightly pull a leg muscle, you rest maybe 1-2 days and then FOMO on training gets the worse of you and you go exercising. As a result, you’re now facing a higher degree muscle injury. Yep, that’s me.
Currently out (and likely missing Oceanside) with achilles tendinitis due to my own stupidity. I have 2 kids so the schedule can very easily get out of whack. A few weeks ago I was home with two sick kids all week so had almost no time to train. The first chance I got to train I decided it was a good idea to double up on run sessions and combine a 60m Z2 run with 50m of 1k repeats. Unsurprisingly the 1k repeats on fatigued legs led to an angry achilles and now I can’t run at all. So yeah I’m an idiot.
if it’s insertional tendonitis, don’t stretch it. Stretching is only useful for the non insertional kind. Similarly, the eccentric calf raises to a heel below toes position is not good for insertional
DM me for the name of the online PT who helped me resolve my AT
(3 months of AT last summer that I finally got rid of)
my stupid training injuries are also overdoing stuff. Non stupid ones are of the bike crash / got hit variety, and a rare “this is just how your anatomy developed” one
I am actually finally learning not to overdo stuff.
I wasn’t even training last year, but I ruined my whole race calendar with a wrist fracture I got slipping on black ice walking through the village at our home mountain.
I broke my hand falling off my bike while standing still. I was turning around to look for something, one foot down and one foot clipped in and lost my balance. I could train, but not race in my brace. I didn’t lose too much fitness but had to skip a bunch of races. Very frustrating and dumb.
I think we had someone here post a pic of their training cave that looked like a scene from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Apparently some kind of freak accident involving a Computrainer flywheel.
Being 50+ I am now prone to the occasional ‘sleeping injury’
Also … one year I thought I’d try an off-road duathlon despite limited MTB skills … and indeed I ran out of skills during the race, fell off, broke ribs, ruined first half of season :-o
Everything else just running … too fast too soon, or too fast when too tired … they say life keeps bringing the lesson until you learn it …
.
I think we had someone here post a pic of their training cave that looked like a scene from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Apparently some kind of freak accident involving a Computrainer flywheel.
That’s way back, yeah!!! I remember that one!!!
We were out on a family ride one Spring afternoon. D’Kid had just started riding without training wheels, and looked especially cute rolling down the sidewalk, her curls blowing in the slipstream
I pulled my phone out of my pocket to capture the moment, and slammed into a mailbox - “objects on screen might be closer than they appear”
D’Wife immediately screamed “hope you didn’t break your phone!!!”
I have my own version of this. I was trying to take a photo of my daughter on her balance bike and walked strait into a pole and sign requiring a few stitches.
The other stupid thing was doing a swim run even and being super careful not to slip on some rocks while entering the water. Once I cleared the rocks it looked deep and I jumped in feet first. Except it wasn’t deep and I hurt my ankle.
Lastly, I now get the occasional really weird and stupid injury. I reached into my refrigerator to grab lunch and it felt like something pinched in my shoulder blade. I was in awful pain for a few days and couldn’t run, swim or bike because of it.
I think we had someone here post a pic of their training cave that looked like a scene from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Apparently some kind of freak accident involving a Computrainer flywheel.
That’s way back, yeah!!! I remember that one!!!
That had to have been 10+ years ago. If memory serves the OP posted pictures showing blood all over the kitchen and garage with a query to the Slowtwitch community with something like, “Can you guess what happened?”
Do injured egos count? In 1986, I hit the floor still clipped in to my early generation Look pedals while riding my bike on my WIND TRAINER. I bent the fork sprinting out of the saddle. Lots of grief from the dormmates on that one.
Last winter, on a very early morning trail run, I smashed my R big toe twice on the same run. Twice! Dumb@$$ x2. Entire toe was purple afterwards.
I have a long history since childhood of bumping into doors, walls, etc.
A few month ago I went out on a run, I see a street sign that was partially dislodged and standing diagonally, about chest height.
There’s plenty of space on the sidewalk and I move right to go around it, well in advance.
Naturally, totally misjudge it and the sign goes right into my bicep. Luckily didn’t need stitches.
This was a clumsy run special, my typical run incident is hitting a low bridge/sign with my forehead due to bad judgement. Happened at least three times that I can remember.
Was at a 65-mile gravel race this weekend that I was on the fence of doing with IMTX coming up. Lost the front group, then cramped up pretty bad so the race was gone and I was just riding…except I didn’t. Decided to bomb a hard-packed-with-loose-gravel downhill to catch a few riders since the wind was picking up and over cooked a turn, but luckily a barbed wire fence kept me from rolling too far in the soft, grassy field. Amazingly, I only have a few scrapes and a sore elbow. Crisis avoided…
About a year and a half back, I was on a training ride on a very hilly course out by Lake Mead. It had rained the week before and out here in the desert, we really don’t have grass to keep earth in place. Consequently, rain run off often washes loose sand across paved trails. Such was the case this time.
I just happened to look down, not really to look down but just resting my neck muscles, right as I was heading into a left hand turn. Just as I looked up I saw the sand drift right in my path. Too late. I was already in it. Turned the bike but it just slid straight into the small ditch off the trail. Bike stopped and the worst thing that happened is I cracked one of the plastic “105” brifter trim pieces. Well, that was the worst thing that happened to the bike. To me, the worst thing that happened was I cracked both the radius and ulna right at the wrist. And by cracked, I mean broke. Like both bones. In half. OK, the radius I broke in half. The ulna, I broke in several pieces.
