Papaya Trees Are Out to Get You: The Truth About My Broken Foot

So, it's been a week and a half since I crossed the finish line at Lavaman Keauhou. This means that I have officially passed the one week mark at which I broke my foot after my first triathlon, which was a relief. Silly as it was, I spent much of Saturday consciously avoiding anything that could trip me, fall on me, break under me, hit me, et cetera, because the feeling of being immobile directly after accomplishing a physical goal was really, really frustrating and I don't care to repeat it.  In addition, it was pointed out to me a couple of days ago that I never really explained (or, more appropriately, admitted) how I got injured. Normally this wouldn't be important, but since this is a training blog (and the person who pointed it out was asking because they were wondering if it was a stress fracture) I think it's relevant to note that it was not an over-stress injury but rather an acute one when I attempted to climb a papaya tree, the branch under my foot broke, and I fell directly on my foot without time to adjust my body so that my derriere could take the brunt of the fall.

That's right, I fell out of a papaya tree.

Two bones broken and a sprained ankle. For the record, I got the papaya I was going for, but it definitely turned out to be the most expensive papaya I've ever had, and I couldn't even eat it because I was so angry. Turns out that papaya branches have soft centers, so it is common knowledge (except to haole dumbasses like me) that you're not supposed to put any weight on them. The first thing out of every local person's mouth when I admitted my stupidity was "oh no, papaya branches are too soft to climb!" Yeah, thanks, duly noted.

To be totally honest, I was just to pissed off and angry at the time to even think about writing about it, but now that I have some distance I can shake my head and laugh about how ridiculous it is that I conquered a triathlon only to be taken down by a tropical fruit tree. So officially, for the record, I wasn't injured because of overtraining; just watch out for those papayas.