Friday, February 13, 2015

Yin And Yang

First the Yin. It didn't rain that much! I pretty much picked the gap in the weather to perfection. I had ten minutes of light drizzle to start and ten minutes on the run in as I headed back to the car. It was misty on the tops but excluding that the rest of the run was full on dry and I even had around thirty minutes of patchy blue sky.

And now for the Yang - and it's quite a big Yang. I have somewhat injured my left shoulder. No, not a fall. I think if I had fallen I wouldn't have got injured at all. No, it happened before I'd even got to Pen Cerrig Calch as I was crossing a boggy section - and there were lots of boggy sections up there today. I wasn't in a hurry and slowed to a walk. With great care I placed my left foot on a small grassy tuft - I find they tend to be firmer footing but as fate would have it, not today. It wasn't in anyway what could be considered solid ground, as my left leg sank beyond the knee and I lurched forward. With cat like reflexes my left arm shot out to arrest the fall but as I pulled myself free of the quagmire I got a shooting pain in my left shoulder.

Taking stock, as I'd only gone about 2km I decided to carry on but it wasn't entirely pleasant running despite the conditions being relatively favourable. Any small movement of my arm caused sharp pain in my shoulder so I ran on, left hand clutching the waistband of my rucksack to immobilise as far as possible my left arm from moving.

I was pitifully slow across Pen Cerrig to Pen Allt Mawr. The conditions underfoot were wet and icey so I just pootled. After that it became more runnable but I was still bothered by the pain in my shoulder. Finally, having reached Mynydd Llysiau, having struggled a little bit with balance across the flat frozen marshy plateau, I decided it probably wasn't wise to continue on so dropped down into the valley and headed for home.

In all I covered just under 22km and 800m ascent so I'm glad I got the run in but it remains to be seen if I'll make it to the orienteering tomorrow or, indeed, Sunday's cross country. I suspect my shoulder will feel even worse tomorrow. These things tend to feel worse before they get better...

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