Silly Scars

Patrick's 1st Race Crash

25K Swim Wetsuit Damage

As I was trail running this weekend and took a tumble- with no injury (there is a first for everything)- I got to thinking about the scars I have and how they tell a hundred different stories.  I have scars that tell stories of wetsuit rashes after long swims, mountain biking adventures, and night time trail run falls.  Those are the stories that are cool to tell hanging out with others.  
I started to think of the stories of other athletes I know from the epic scars from surviving a bike crashes to the little scars from toppling over at a stop sign.  As I ran this story line in my head I turned to the not so epic scars.  I know we all have them those scars because you forgot to step up on a curb or because you forgot your tri glide application to ALL friction points.

Me vs. Woods

I have some favorites of my own silly scars.

Who knows!!!!

I have two such scars on my ankle.  The first one is on the back of my left ankle.  I was doing an Olympic tri back before we had our own chip holder anklets- which are soft and made of neoprene. The race had these bands like the arm bands many races have or that you get at the fair.  They are plastic and with sharp edges.  Turns out after 3 miles of running these bands tend to dig in.  There was little I could do to fix it and I only had 3 more miles to go.  I did what most athletes do in the moment and pushed on- singing the whole way to makes myself forget how much it hurt.  At the finish line my happiest moment was when they took that damn band off; of course that moment was followed by the moment of realizing my sock was bloody from the incision the stupid band had made.  Good news is I learned from the experience and we bought soft anklets for race chips.  Turns out the race community must have learned too, because it seem like after this purchase every race has the nicer timing chip bands.  No more scars from that! 
The second scar is one of my favorites because it proves I can get hurt by just being near my bike during a great adventure.  It happened at RAGBRAI.  This is an event where you bike across Iowa over the course of a week while camping.  There is of course lots of opportunities to get scars while crossing a state on your bike, but I didn't get this one while on the bike or out riding.  Nope, this one came from exiting the tent.  The tent's had this little space near the door where it was a little covered.  One night we were going to have some bad weather so we placed our bikes into this space to give them a little cover from the rain.  One bike was at one door of the tent and the other bike was at the other door of the tent so there was no way out without finding a bike.  Well, I was trying to get out of the tent to go see what the day had in store.  I remember carefully placing my foot for my first step out in to the day then carefully placing my second foot, then taking my next step with, I guess, a sense of danger because in that moment I slammed my lower shine right into my bike gearing.  I managed to jab the gear into my ankle creating two puncture wounds.  Nothing major of course, but it did bleed and hurt like a son of a gun. 

The scar is now very faint as it has been a few years since this incident.  I remember it as one of my favorite scars because it takes me back to a memory of an amazing adventure, with great people.  Silly scars do that, they remind us of the little silly things we do.  They remind us we are human and this is a sport where some times being human is the Achilles heel. 
We can learn a lot from our scars, even those created by events we would rather forget.  We can learn patience with others and ourselves, we can learn who we are when faced with adversity, we can learn how to over come, and we can learn to laugh at those silly scars.  


I am are continuing to raise money for the Navy Seal Foundation.  For more information please read this: Supporting the Navy Seal Foundation- Frogman Swim 
We've been blogging for a while now. If you enjoyed this one, you may enjoy others. Look though the Blog Archive on the right, for more of our experiences and random thoughts. 

Thank you for your ongoing support of our adventures.  
Please feel free to share our blog.