This is dg’s brother, rg, who can be pretty funny about his catastrophic sports endeavors. He neglects here to mention his epic road race (many years ago) one hot July in Brantford, Ontario, when he fell over from heat exhaustion and was found by the EMS crawling on his hands and knees in hot, oozing, fresh road tar — towards the finish line. He was taken to the hospital without being allowed to complete the course. In the photo below, blown up, you can see the blood dripping, but it’s blurry — I will spare you the vision. Another important piece of context is that Rodger is actually too gimpy to train for races. He just runs a lot of races without training. What follows is his email report.
dg
So at 62 I thought it was time to branch out from road racing — too much same old same old. So on Saturday I ran the Iroquois 7K Trail Run at Crawford Lake. We set off through the woods on the Bruce Trail. We ran up the escarpment and down and up. I hit a nice flat run at about 4.5K and cranked it up. A rock leapt up out of the trail and tripped my right foot. I grazed my left knee and head. I got up to run and realized I couldn’t see. Fortunately the guy behind me had picked up what was left of my frames and the lenses and gave me his paper towels. His opinion was that I was bleeding pretty badly. I picked up the pace. There was a longer race looping back on the same trail. Some runners asked if I was OK, others just gasped. I went on up the escarpment — by this time we were walking a lot. As I went by, runners whispered to each other, “He’s bleeding.” As I came around a corner, a volunteer suggested I see a doctor, and I shouted back, “I am a doctor.” Into the home stretch — more checks that I was OK and reassurance that the finish was near. As always, a patient of mine happened to be running in the race, and her mother, a nurse from Oakville-Trafalgar Memorial Hospital, snapped pics at the end. I was disappointed that there was no award for the runner sporting the most blood at the finish. I was 19th overall and to my surprise 5th in the 51+ age group, which shows there are a lot of vaguely crazy older guys out on the trails. I took my glasses in today, and because I’d had them for less than a year, they are replacing the frames and lenses for free. I was surprised that the warranty extended to demolishing your glasses doing a face plant on the trail. I think they may just be giving me a break because the last time I got new glasses was after I did a face glide along the road falling off my bike. I’m searching for my next trail run.
—Rodger Glover
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Rodger Glover is a Family Practice physician in Oakville, Ontario, a multiple dog owner, and, apparently, an extreme sports enthusiast. He appears here (right) on a better day.