Playing Hard with Luck

Sometimes I wonder if this blog is just an external medical journal. I seem to have more physical ailments to discuss than training profile. Today while crossing an crosswalk I was hit by a car. The car was doing a California stop and it me at less than five miles per hour. Just to keep this straight in my head, this is what happen. 

A small black SUV was at a stoplight. A pedestrian was waiting for the walk signal and I was about 40 yards from the intersection when the light changed in our favor. I jogged to the crosswalk and watched the walker and the driver do a little dance to see who would pass first. The driver after a few seconds let the pedestrian cross first, which was the legal thing to do. As a runner, I have come to this same intersection maneuver thousands of times and much prefer to run behind a vehicle than in front. So I began waving the SUV through and he started to crawl into the turn. I slowed to let him pass in front of me and he stopped a few feet into the crosswalk long enough for me to question if he was letting me go first. Also having been in this situation thousands of times before, a runner should never try to cut directly in front of a car, moving or not, so I tracked a yard in front of the SUV towards the far side of the crosswalk and kept my eyes on the driver. Thats when he decided to drive through me. I always expect this to happen but it is a .001% reality. So when his bumper struck my quad, I was already performing a ballistic lateral jump away and my hands out ready to push off his hood. Which they hit quite hard. He was young, wearing a white ball cap and large squarish sunglassses. His hands came up, one from the wheel the other holding his female passengers hand. She screamed out in shock. I screamed out as well, a colorful explicative laced paragraph describing his driving skill, what I imagine he does to farm animals and what he could do with himself. I was pretty keyed up at this point so I kept moving. I'd been hit harder. 

So the question that I mulled over on the way back to the hotel was, "Am I a lightening rod for injury or do I somehow have the luck to not get the worst of something that normally is quite bad?"  It is not phrased very well but we all know well stories of people in the same situation described above and they suffer horrible knee or leg injury. The fracture in my foot last month could have been tremendously more severe and yet I was off crutches in ten days. A fractured tibia a few years ago should have kept me in a cast for six weeks and light duty for another six but was running in four. It goes without saying that doctors do not consider lighty telling a family their loved one will not live to see the morning and yet my wife was given that diagnosis and here I am. 

I somehow eek out the low percentage shot when the chips are against me physically. So again I wonder, is it a problem that I am in that situation more often than most or is it Favor or blessing or luck or preparedness or proper mindset and determination that allow me to overcome these injurious obstacles. After tonight I tend to want to believe I am luckier than I deserve but don't dwell on the negative. 

Being positive and lucky work together. For a long time now, I have used a sign off that says, "It is not enough to exist, I am going to live."  I don't create any particular blog post or personal position with this statement in mind but realize afterwards that its fitting as I just keep trying to move forward. To get past a hardship and continue my legacy. 

This is one of those philosophical debates that can never truly be answered. Every persons answer is based on their own perception of their luck and injury, hardship and belief of it being ordained or ordinary. While it is now somewhat self serving to end with the usual salutation mentioned above, I will simply say...

...I thankful for my health and ability to overcome adversity.