Running is dangerous

October 29, 2009

Today I once again got a lesson that running can be dangerous. No, I’m not talking about the sudden deaths of several runners in the Detroit Marathon some weeks ago. I’m talking about track training.

So, today I had a session of 200m runs – turned out it would be five instead of six because of the incidence. I was with my old friend Miika and for the first time in the autumn we used the 200m indoor track here in Jyväskylä. When I came there at 6PM the place was crowded like seldom before. Lots of kids hoping around, parents picking up their kids and so on. The first 3 runs were ok, not very fast (32/33) but that can be attributed to the extra meters we had to make, when running around other, moveable objects on the track. However, 30m after the start of the 4th run two kiddies were running right in front of us and were all over the place. While Miika was able to maneuver through the girls, I had no chance but to run into one of the girls and to make a dive including an artistic role on the tartan myself. Quite amazing when you are running with something like 22km/h but then you see this girl in front of you and the world is in supper-slow motion. You just think: Where should I put this small thing in such a way that noone is going to get hurt? Well, I decided to put her somewhere to the left and mike a dive to the right side. Ouch. The girl screamed a bit but I guess it was just because of the shock – Guess she will have some nitemare of this big guy being in front of her within a few hundreds of a second. For my part I hurt my hands and hip a bit – nothing dramatic and only the torn fingernail is a pity. I hope the track will be less crowded next time and the kids will get more careful.

Lesson: Always run slow. No hurry. If you take it easy, no one will get hurt. Right?! Hmm – still have to think about that