I felt myself losing my footing and tried to roll so I'd land on my side instead of my face (I'd rather break a shoulder than a neck) and while I wouldn't have been too happy I was doing all right until my head got stopped by a tree stump.

I rolled over onto my side, took off my hat and sunglasses, and remember saying something to the effect of "Ugh...that hurt."

I tried to assess my circumstances to figure out if I'd be able to run out of the woods or if I should lay in the trail until my wife caught up to me (we were running the same route but separately as I planned on running extra before she finished.)

Then I heard some mountain bikers and while I wasn't really worried that they'd run me over I've had bad experiences laying injured in the middle of a trail before so I sat up (I'd already determined neck and shoulders didn't hurt and I could wiggle all my fingers and toes) and started getting to my feet.

When they came by I waved and was greeted by this site:

I didn't know I was bleeding until I saw my hand (which had been holding my head.)

The mountain biker was an athletic trainer/physical therapist so he did a quick test for concussion (What's your name, who's the president, what day is it, what did you have for breakfast, follow my finger with your eyes, let me check pupil dilation etc.) and I seemed coherent enough, so while he rummaged in his bag for some gauze I grabbed the camera so I could see how bad it was:

This photo is courtesy of his girlfriend...I wonder what her thinking was, coming upon this laying in the middle of the trail?

So, Tim/Tom (I misrecall his name, I thought it was Tim but think it might have actually been Tom) bandaged me up enough to let the bleeding stop a bit before I ran back along the trail to find Erin while him and his girlfriend rode their bikes behind me.

And yes, wearing a hat over a bandaged hat does look a bit ridiculous:

It took me about 2.5 miles to run out of the woods...I could have probably done it in a bit under 2 miles, but running back up the trail a bit let me find my wife so that she could head back with me (we cut our runs short by a bit) and it let me take a much easier trail back. I wasn't dizzy or nauseated and had no trouble running, but we figured it was better to be safe(ish) than sorry.

We got back, figured out the local ERs aren't actually open on the weekends and we'd be best served going to Portland, and I went and had them clean me up and stitch my head back together.  It turned out to just be a 1 cm cut (head wounds do like to bleed) and nothing worse, but I did have quite a bit of dirt and gravel embedded in me and I don't fancy getting infected.  

So now the question is...will I be nervous next week when I get back to the trail, or will I be my normal fearless(ish) self running down the trail?  I guess this is why we practice a course ahead of time, to avoid problems like this slowing us down during the race.  First time I've hit my head on a fall though.  

And no - I'm not going to start running with a helmet. (Gotten enough of those types of comments on facebook.)

Anybody else running the Bruiser in September?  It's a fun course.

Wow, that's impressive looking!

I had a run back in June where I fell twice, no blood but a calf that is still slightly bruised two months later. I did a race a few weeks after the two falls and found I started off a bit timid going down the first few hills but after that I chilled out and got into my normal groove. Silly thing was that one fall was on flat ground and the other was a wet footbridge that I forgot to slow down for. So I'm not sure why the down hills made me nervous, I'm usually a downhill machine.

Oh, and both times I fell the first thing I checked was my Garmin.

Awesome photos, and I noticed that really nice shirt too! 

I'd previously posted this in the swamp, on facebook, and linked to 'em from my blog, and you are the first person to point it out.

Yup, nice shirt.