Unplanned Excursions to the Ground

LESSONS IN AVOIDING THOSE PESKY FACE PLANTS

- Doug Mayer

Two miles from the finish line of Massachusetts’ Stone Cat 50-mile trail race, Aliza Lapierre fell so hard she blacked out. “When I came to, my right leg was perpendicular to the rest of my body,” she said. “I lifted it and flopped it parallel to my left leg.”

Lapierre blacked out a second time. When she came around again, she was still wondering if she could squirm to the finish line. She got two inches before—you guessed it—blacking out a third time. Lapierre, of Williston, Vermont, would later find out at the hospital that she had broken her femur. The culprit was a tree root.

Orthopedic surgeons call her accident a “sudden deceleration injury.”

The medical profession also has another catchy term for a fall: an “unplanned excursion to the ground.” Falls vary so widely, they went for a catchall definition, so to speak.

The process for how we stop trail running and start plummeting is far more complex and delicate than what we may think when biffing full force into Mother Earth.