Some slips, some falls, some blood

The schedule called for a hike in Fish Creek today. It's cross training this week so there isn't much, if any swim bike run. I decided to hit some trails on the south side of the river. This is a very pretty area, lots of evergreen trees on a steep slope, crisscrossed with trails of various sizes. Now, steep slope is a bit of an understatement in some places. This is an actual escarpment. Fall down it and you end up in a mostly frozen river.

I decided to follow some of the smaller paths up and down the hill. This was more of an adventure than I had anticipated. There's been a lot of melt lately and the path is usually a bit of a gully, so it's pretty icy in places. I had a couple of falls where I was expecting it, so I landed on my hands. The tricky part is that the sides are icy too, but only as a thin film. You can see the ground, so you don't think there is ice. That led to a couple unexpected falls, one of which wasn't good at all. There's a spot on your hand where most people rest it when they're writing. That very spot has a gouge in it about the size of a dime, although with surprisingly little blood. My right elbow has a big bruise that I'm icing. I don't think my tailbone is bruised. I'm just glad nobody was watching.

The rest of the walk was really good, since I had decided I was going to be very careful about how I went down. In the end, down was down a paved and cleared path. All this was just under 1.5 hours. I figured get it done in the morning while the ground was still frozen. Later today some of the places I went will be a bog.

A quick lunch and shower later, I was in for my massage. Things are better, though the top of my right hip flexors is in tough shape. She advises icing and working that in some very specific ways. I'm feeling a bit like I've been whacked with a frozen wet cod, so I think I'll go do some icing and rollering, then get on with the project at hand.