old skills fall hard

Remember when you were a kid and you could wipe out, have a quick cry and get back to playing? The next day your only memory of the fall would be a nice scab starting on your elbow or knee. Same thing with barfing. You barf and you go back to playing.

As an adult the event (falling or barfing) seems to linger with you. Maybe it is that we have farther to fall or it takes more force for that food to come up but either incident now leaves me a wreck. If I throw up I practically put my back out, break some ribs and burst all the blood vessels around my eyes. My whole body resists it. For days I'll have acid reflux. It just isn't natural.

Same with falling. As my friend Renee says 'Adults falling is awkward looking. It is not supposed to happen'. I admit; I was overly confident after my LA rollerblading experience. I neglected to notice that the area I was rollerblading in in LA was completely flat. So I took off yesterday thinking I could handle almost anything. The first thing that literally tripped me up was a large lip of concrete on a downhill slope. I was startled by it and bailed. Two or three people kindly asked if I was okay and I shook it off fairly quickly. $10 wrist guards had officially paid for themselves. I took a little break and started up again. A little more hesitant I pondered each decline before skating on.

What caught me up was the corners. One area looked like it was very gentle slope. But it ended in a corner I couldn't see beyond. I figured I needed to go for it, that there would be more corners ahead and I needed to believe I could make it. Mistake. As I rounded the corner it turned into a steep downhill. My rollerblades were vibrating with speed and I knew there was no stopping...because I really didn't know how. Something else was going to stop me. And it did. I hit a small amount of gravel and completely upended myself. Landing flat on my back. Wind knocked out of me. Again, more people stopping to see if I was okay. I took a few moments to collect myself, then took off my blades and switched to running shoes. I was done for the day.

This morning I could barely roll out of bed. No major road rash (just one elbow) but my ass is literally bruised and I have to sit down like I have killer hemorrhoids. Not good Mav. This is going to take a week to recover from.

And I probably need to buy elbow and knee pads before I try again next weekend. I will be scoping out only flat sections on the seawall and walking any downhills on the grass. This is one sport where pushing myself just might end badly.