Falling Down

Few things bring joy to my heart like watching (other) people fall down. Some of my favorites include fat kids carrying cupcakes, people in Vibram Five Fingers, fat people in general, and my all time favorite, fat people in Vibram Five Fingers carrying cupcakes. As a connoisseur of gravitational foibles, I would be remiss to not provide you with an account of a different kind, the hotheaded-skinny-ish-athlete-taking-himself-too-seriously-trips-and-falls-into-a-lamppost-in-front-of-patio-full-of-people-eating-burritos variety. Correct. I was not enjoying a burrito.

While wrapping up a 70 minute run the other day I was feeling pretty good. I had some shiny new kicks. One of my favorite running trails was now free of snow. I was treated to stellar views of the valley. I was rocking some new tunes. It was a good run. I had some tempo work to do. I was doing my speed work back on the flatlands near the end of my run. While cookin' down Higgins St. I approached a roundabout (or "rotary" if you're from B-ah-ston, Mass.). I decided I was up to the task of navigating the complicated maze of sidewalks, curbs, intersections and turns at full speed. Now this roundabout happens to be on a busy road, at a busy intersection which houses a busy burrito shop, and, it being a sunny day, an even busier front patio. I was not up to the task of navigating said obstacles and began a rather slow and eminent full-face fall after a bit of curb jumped up and grabbed my new shoe. It was one of those falls that just hasn't happened yet - an inevitability as there is no chance the bottom half of your body will ever catch up with the top half. Unless, the top half of your body is violently arrested by a lamppost thus allowing the bottom half of your body to catch back up. The price of preventing a full-on, flat-out fall? An attention grabbing bang, a shaking lamppost and a bruised arm.

Yeah, there's really no way to recover from that so, deciding not to look over at the patio full of people, I just continued with my tempo as if it were some kind of new parkour move that the plebeians eating burritos just hadn't heard of yet.

But no, I really just tripped and fell.

And now to feel better about myself:
http://failblog.org/2011/03/01/epic-fail-photos-running-to-first-base-fail-gif/