Iustin Pop: Yes, still alive!

Yeah, again three months have passed since my last (trivial) post, and I really
don’t know where the time has flown.

I suppose the biggest problem was the long summer vacation, which threw me
off-track, and then craziness started. Work work work, no time for anything,
which kept me fully busy in August, and then “you should travel”.

So mid-September I went on my first business trip since Covid, again to
Kirkland, which in itself was awesome. Flew out Sunday, and as I was concerned I
was going to lose too much fitness—had a half-marathon planned on the weekend
after the return—I ran every morning of the four days I was there. And of
course, on the last day, I woke up even earlier (05:30 AM), went out to run
before sunrise, intending to do a very simple “run along the road that borders
the lake for 2.5K, then back”. And right at the farthest point, a hundred metres
before my goal of turning around, I tripped, started falling, and as I was
falling, I hit—sideways—a metal pole. I was in a bus station, it was the pole
that has the schedule at the top, and I hit it at relatively full speed, right
across my left-side ribs. The crash took the entire air out of my lungs, and I
don’t remember if I ever felt pain/sensation like that—I was seriously not able
to breathe for 20 seconds or so, and I was wondering if I’m going to pass out at
this rate.

Only 20 seconds, because my Garmin started howling like a police siren, and the
screen was saying something along the lines of: “Incident detected; contacting
emergency services in 40…35…” and I was fumbling to cancel that, since a) I
wasn’t that bad, b) notifying my wife that I had a crash would have not been a
smart idea.

My left leg was scraped in a few places, my left hand pretty badly, or more than
just scraped, so my focus was on limping back, and finding a fountain to wash my
injuries, which I did, so I kept running with blood dripping down my hand. Fun
fun, everything was hurting, I took an Uber for the ~1Km to the office, had many
meetings, took another Uber and flew back to Zurich. Seattle → San Francisco →
Zürich, I think 14 hours, with my ribs hurting pretty badly. But I got home
(Friday afternoon), and was wondering if I can run or not on Saturday.

Saturday comes, I feel pretty OK, so I said let’s try, will stop if the pain is
too great. I pick up my number, I go to the start, of course in the last block
and not my normal block, and I start running. After 50 metres, I knew this won’t
be good enough, but I said, let’s make it to the first kilometre. Then to the
first fuelling point, then to the first aid point, at which moment I felt good
enough to go to the second one.

Long story short, I ran the whole half marathon, with pain. Every stop for
fuelling was mentally hard, as the pain stopped, and I knew I had to start
running again, and the pain would resume. In the end, managed to finish: two and
a half hours, instead of just two hours, but alive and very happy. Of course, I
didn’t know what was waiting for me… Sunday I wake up in heavy pain, and despite
painkillers, I was not feeling much better. The following night was terrible,
Monday morning I went to the doctor, had X-rays, discussion with a radiologist.
“Not really broken, but more than just bruised. See this angle here? Bones don’t
have angles normally”. Painkillers, chest/abdomen wrapping, no running! So my
attempts to “not lose fitness” put me off running for a couple of weeks.

Then October came, and I was getting better, but work was getting even more
crazy. I don’t know where November passed, honestly, and now we’re already in
December. I did manage to run, quite well, managed to bike a tiny bit and swim a
little, but I’m not in a place where I can keep a regular and consistent
schedule.

On the good side, I managed this year, for the first time since Covid, to not
get sick. Hey, a sport injury is 100× better than a sickness, like I had in
previous years, taking me out for two weeks. But life was crazy enough that I
didn’t read some of my email accounts for months, and I’m just now starting to
catch up to, well, baseline.

Of course, “the” rib—the lowest one on the left side—is long-healed, or so I
thought. After some strength training early this week, I was very sore the next
day, and I wanted to test whether my rib is still sore. I touched it at “the
point”, and it hurt so badly I couldn’t believe. Two and a half months, and it’s
not done-done.

And now it’s just two weeks before Christmas and New Year’s, and that time off
will ruin my rhythm again. At least ski vacation is booked, ski service is done,
and slowly, work is getting in good enough shape to actually enjoy thinking
about vacation.

So, in the end, a very adventurous last third of the year, and that wasn’t even
all. As I’m writing this, my right wrist is bandaged and for the past 24 hours
it hasn’t hurt too much, but that’s another, and not so interesting, story.

I’ll close with a yay for always being behind/backlogged, but alive and
relatively well. My sport injuries are “elective injuries” so to speak, and I’m
very thankful for that. See you in the next post!