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BY HOLLY BENNETT

INJURY SCHMINJURY

Im an athlete and Im accident-prone. Those attributes rarely intermix gracefully.

Youve seen themthe athletes who always seem to sport some sort of limp, grimace, bandage, cast, sling or other rehabilitative apparatus. They carry their sores and scars with pride, war wounds from the battlefield of racing and training for triathlon. But delve a little deeper.

HUNTER KING

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Dare to ask your training partner how his injury of the month occurred, and more often than not youll nd that he dusted it up with an everyday obstacle, entirely unrelated to swimming, cycling or running. Hes similarly sidelined as if he had crashed spectacularly on a scary descent or pushed his body well past the point of redline. Yet the real reason for his injury is probably rather unimpressive. I know, because Im one of those people. Case in point: the Laptop Incident. Here I sit trying my best to type, yet nursing a splitting headache from an injury sustained earlier today. No, the whack to my noggin wasnt the result of a bike ride gone bad. It wasnt even due to an overzealous wideswinging lane partner in the pool. Nope. I managed to drop my laptop on my own head. Take my word for it: A 17-inch MacBook Pro is a painful weaponone I somehow wielded against myself, directly between my left eye socket and the bridge of my nose, entirely by accident. Holy hell, that hurt! Now my head is throbbing, my eye is blackened and I had to abandon my Masters swim session 15 minutes in, the motion making me feel much worse rather than soothing my wound. The Laptop Incident would be embarrassing enough if that were the only time I injured myself in klutzy and completely non-sports-related fashion, resulting in time off from triathlon. But sadly, these occurrences have been all too common during my time on Earth. Thats not to say I havent sustained actual sports injuries as wellIve had more than my share, including a full-blown concussion from a mid-race bike wreck and even a shiner attributed to an errant elbow in an Ironman swim. But Ill fess up to the fact that my own foibles, more often than not, happen for one simple and not-so-sporty reason: Im a dolt. For example, let me tell you about Frankenfoot. That was the pet name I gave my own left foot following a horric injuryone that kept me from all exercise for the better part of two months (and left me with nothing better to do than nickname my heavily bandaged appendage). Years ago I was just walking along in the quaint downtown of Manitou Springs, Colo., after polishing off a nice Mexican food lunch and half a margarita. (I swear, we shared!) My boyfriend and I wandered back toward our car innocently
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enough. The pivotal moment came when I made an abrupt change of direction, second-guessing the path I had chosen to the parking garage. In that single move I caught my foot on a wire protruding from a sidewalk grate that nearly severed my big toe. It took a few moments of stunned staring at the pool of blood quickly forming under my foot to register what had happenedand for the agonizing pain to set in. Later, I exited the emergency room with 17 staples stabilizing my toe and wondering in my medicationfuddled mind whether Id ever run again. Frankenfoot was a fairly extreme event, but even the slightest of injuries can have a lasting effect. Take the High Heel Hazard, only loosely related to multisport in that it happened one evening after I nished a long Ironman training ride and it subsequently restricted my running. Post-ride, I swapped my Sidis and Lycra shorts for some sweet new shoes and a dress and headed out on the town to celebrate a girlfriends birthday. The shoes were pretty darn sexy, with summery straps and three-and-a-half-inch heels. The heels wobbled as I tried my best to smoothly maneuver a cobbled sidewalk, the shoes twisting just so and producing a tiny twinge in the front of my foot. The twinge turned out to be a ligament, tearing ever so slightlyyet enough to land me in the pool with a buoyancy belt for my remaining six weeks of pre-Ironman runs. Im also guilty of combining Rest, Relaxation and a Cracked Rib. I wasnt exactly sedentary when I tweaked my torsoin fact I was stand-up paddle boarding. But there was no ocean swell of note and I was in a protected reef area. Unfortunately, the ocean was especially calm due to a low tide, which meant that the reef rocks were just a tad too close to the waters surface. In the end, I snagged the board on a rock, the sudden stall jolting my body backward onto said rock, and the rest was cracked rib history (and six weeks of slow healing). So next time your lane mate or teammate or race rival shows up with a new sympathy-seeking boo-boo, bragging about her triathlon toughness and how she dug to such depths she bypassed all safety and reason, get to the bottom of her story. Im willing to wager its more of a goofy one than a good one. Or maybe thats just me?