I have been running since 1978, largely off-road, sometimes over very rough terrain and far from civilisation. In that time I have only twice injured myself sufficiently to have to stop running for more than a minute or two and even in the worst case I was back running the following day.
The Saturday after Christmas my family and I visited my parents. Abby (age ten) fancied a spot of biking on the wild side so my wife dropped us on one of the old ox droves which are common on the Wiltshire and Dorset downland, about ten miles short of my parents' house. With all the recent rain much entertainment was expected and we saw some off-road motorcyclists knocking along that stretch as we set off, me on foot and Abby on her bike.
The track was just wonderful! Not too muddy (that's obviously a relative term!) but exceedingly wet with a slight downhill gradient which made it that much easier for Abby. We passed the bikers parked up with some Landies who seemed a bit surprised to see us enjoying the mud as much as they had been!
All too soon we had to turn off the drove and descend a lane for a while before turning off onto a path along the route of an old Roman road. Once we'd struggled up a slope away from the lane it flattened out and was wonderful going, again not to muddy but soft enough to provide some challenge. Fields to the left, woods to the right and a clear, blue sky overhead - magic!
After a few miles we crossed onto the greensward of Martin Down for a long, easy descent to another ancient trackway, along a tarmacced part of which lay our destination. The ruts on the first part were deep and quite tricky going for Abby so I was gently pushing her as I ran to keep her momentum going.
And then I went down in a rut full of very gunky water. I don't remember losing grip or tripping on anything - I just fell. With my left arm out towards Abby and my right hand holding her jumper (it was much warmer than we'd expected) my right knee took the impact. I felt no jarring so assumed I must have hit mud but when I clambered back to my feet and looked down all I saw was a deep, clean laceration just above my right patella, nearly two inches long and angling in about half an inch; there was no blood. I suspect a sharp flint was to blame so know how mammoths must have felt when attacked by Neolithic hunters!
I don't react well to personal injury so was very worried about passing out in shock. I immediately sent Abby cycling on to my parents' house, about a mile away, to summon help and started walking after her. It seemed an age before she disappeared from view but apparently she really enjoyed cycling the tarmacced lane with the bike throwing up the floodwaters into her face!
I eventually met Marie more or less at my parents' house since she had misunderstood the directions delivered by a very shaken daughter and had initially gone off the wrong way! But I was soon whisked off to A&E in Salisbury where they cleaned out the worst of the gunk, stitched the knee up and gave me some antibiotic tablets with instructions to get the wound checked at my local surgery on the Monday.
Two days later the nurse removed my dressing whereupon an almighty stench arose! The doctor was summoned and immediately packed me off to Wonford, suggesting that I take overnight gear for a couple of nights' stay. The redness on my leg spread noticeably during the couple of hours I lay on a couch in A&E - I had clearly picked up a pretty nasty bug! Intravenous antibiotics were deemed to be the answer and I started the first of my eleven daily doses that night. That was four pints of fluid injected into my bloodstream every 24 hours! (I was later told that 150 tons of farmyard muck had been dumped near where I fell so it's perhaps not surprising that I got so badly infected.)
The infection continued to spread for the next few days, even after a thorough cleaning of the wound under general anaesthetic, but finally stabilised after a second cleanout. I felt pretty bad after coming round the second time and asked Marie not to visit that day as I didn't want the children to see me in such a state. As it happened I was in a quite different state by the time they would have arrived ...
I asked for some pain relief (the only time during my stay), expecting something like aspirin or paracetamol. What I got was tramadol, a relative of morphine. Tramadol is Very Good Stuff! It was like being in a flotation tank. I felt warm, supremely relaxed and even had to make a conscious effort to move my limbs in order to feel anything (lying still I was devoid of physical sensation) and with some very evocative music on the Walkman, I was soon flying with the angels!
By the Thursday the doctors had identified the bug that I had picked up and put me on two more-specific antibiotics and on the Sunday I was taken off the drips and put on tablets, my knee was stitched up and I was told that I could go home. It was not a moment too soon as I was slowly going stir crazy, stuck in bed in a hot ward with food of dubious quality and very little sleep (three half nights in the nine days since injuring myself).
It was a real relief to get home the next day, having eaten virtually nothing for two days (I think I'd lost nearly a stone by then but didn't have the courage to actually weigh myself!) I spent the first week more or less stationary with my leg religously kept up all the time but found it much easier to concentrate on reading than I had in the misery that was hospital. By the second week I was told to move around a bit more which was even better and I returned to work the week after that, once my stitches had been removed.
In Week Four I started exercises to strengthen my leg (since the muscles had wasted somewhat due to lack of use) plus some rowing and biking in the gym and hope to have started running six weeks after the injury.
Abby felt a bit guilty about being the "cause" of my decline and fall but I certainly don't blame her and have no regrets about doing the run; in fact, I am glad I injured myself running rather than in some other way. It was no use getting down about it - I just had to make the most of my situation but it does seen rather ironic that I've been running over all sorts of relatively dangerous terrain off the beaten track for 25 years with only a few minor traumatic injuries, only to properly injure myself on an easy track a mile from my destination!