I took a tumble on the Wild Turkey Trail Saturday and broke my clavicle. It might be the first time I’ve ever broken a bone. There are times I should have broken many bones. I was tossed out of the bed of a pickup truck at 55 miles per hour. I was swept over a waterfall on the Pedernales onto the rocks below. No broken bones. But yesterday, I tried to turn my fall into a roll and didn’t quite have the angle to pull off that maneuver. My shoulder slammed hard into a rock. The kind of hard where I knew immediately that I wasn’t going to be okay.

I was an hour into my run and it took two hours to walk back to the trail head. I drove home before going to the ER to look at it. My left shoulder looked dislocated, which it was after falling off a bike in fourth grade. So, I have experience with dislocated shoulders. This is worse. It will take six to eight weeks to heal. The Bandera 100K is in eight weeks. Bandera is out.

So I’m pretty bummed out right now. I was scared of running Bandera, but also so excited. It was consuming all my free thoughts, which is why I like projects like that. But now, Bandera is a broken dream. I’m broken. The whole world is broken.

I’m going to try to stay positive and redirect my energies into writing my novel, but I think I like running more than writing. I like both hobbies, but I need physical activity. There was a time after college that I thought I would become a professional house painter. I like physical work. I think I’d have been happy with that career. I might be able to workout on the elliptical with this, after the pain subsides. We’ll see.