how i'm just like usain bolt

i was feeling quite adventurous yesterday at the beach.  already i had paddleboarded for the first time, kayaked, and braved a very rough surf with liam and a boogie board.  so as i sat and watched my best friend lainey try to master the art of skimboarding, i thought to myself, why not?  when jumping on a slick board in just a few inches of water, i figured that the worst that could happen was that i might trip or stumble off the edge.  i would be mere centimeters from land.  really, what could possibly go wrong?

oh my.

i neglected to consider a few key points.  for one, i'm not in the least bit athletic; anything that requires gross motor skills has never come easily to me.   for another, i'm not exactly a spring chicken.  i'm slowly approaching forty and i'm already at the point that as soon as i wake up each morning, i stretch in bed to see if any ailments have reared their ugly head overnight.   and for a third, my body does not react well to mishaps.  i was already sporting a rather nasty bruise on my left thigh and had no idea how i acquired it.  it obviously wasn't anything memorable and yet, there i was, trying to position myself in photos so that i didn't look like a battered housewife.

but Lord have mercy, that bruise pales in comparison to what's going on with my right hip now.  or, should i say, the entire right side of my lower body, stretching from my waist to the back of my knee. 

but i digress.  so yes, i tried skimboarding.  i listened to the advice lainey had culled from a friendly beach neighbor who was looking all sorts of professional on her skimboard after apparently only one day of using it.  "just throw it out a few feet ahead of you and then jump on," lainey relayed to me.  "use your back foot to stabilize yourself and just ride it as long as you can."

so i did it.  and it went sort of well.  i probably skimmed a few feet before awkwardly disembarking and retrieving the board for another go at it.  my confidence was up; it was actually fun.  so i geared up for my second run, chucking the board into the shallow surf.  i ran, jumped, and made brief contact with the board.  enough contact, at least, so that i was leaning back on my right foot just like i was supposed to be.  but then, somehow, the board kept going ... and my feet did not.  almost in slow motion, i wound up in mid-air, and then crashed onto my right hip.  hard. the shock of the impact sent my sunglasses flying a few feet in one direction and my visor, which had been fairly tightly affixed to my head, a few feet in another.  lainey scrambled for both as i sat, stunned, in the wet sand.

i may be one of the most emotionally sensitive people i know -- but one thing i pride myself on is my crazily high threshold for physical pain.  i just don't hurt easily, and i hardly ever take any kind of pain medication.  i got through two natural childbirths without so much as an advil and never even once considered an epidural.

but.

this pain was like nothing i've ever experienced.  and as i sat in the surf, actually laughing (mostly from embarrassment),  i also cried a few tears from the pain.  i began to bleed a little -- i think from slamming into some rough sand -- but i knew the real bleeding was taking place below the surface, as i began to swell.

and now, a day later, it is so bad that i literally cannot walk.  i can't really even sit.  as i type this post, i am leaning on my left hipbone, not only to avoid putting pressure on my right side, but also because i am literally protruding about three inches and i'm severely off balance. lainey, bill, and chris, in between rounds of handing me ice packs, have begun to joke that i seem to have a third cheek (and i don't mean of the facial variety.)

it should  make perfect sense that at some point during my first few stages of pain, i likened myself to usain bolt. on our two-hour drive down to the beach earlier this week, liam entertained me by reading out snippets from the olympics cover story of his latest issue of sports illustrated for kids.  one interesting fact was that while most runners hit the track with two times their body weight, usain hits at a force of five times his body weight.  they've somehow analyzed his running, and determined that with each stride, his foot hits the ground with an impact of about a thousand pounds.

with my unfortunate experience today, i am certain that i am just like usain bolt.  i have no doubt that i slammed down onto that sand with about six hundred pounds of force, all concentrated in a small area on my right hip.  i shudder to think about how long it will take my body to completely heal.  i anticipate having to relive this event many times over the course of the next few weeks as i venture to the pool and then back to the beach, because there is no way anyone will take one look at me in a swimsuit without seeing this new part of my body that really should have its own zipcode and wanting to know how it came to be.

so there you have it.  my long and dramatic (but quite accurate) account of how i'm just like usain bolt.  let's just hope he fares a bit better in london than i did in the shallow waters of topsail island.