Our weekend warrior strikes again: “I jumped up and sprinted off with blood pouring impressively from my leg”

At risk of sounding like your teacher when they told you off for not listening at school because you were daydreaming about your new bike – what was the last thing I just said to you?

If you can’t remember, well last month I ended my column with these words: “It’s not how many times you fall, it’s how many times you get up without learning anything from the experience.” And boy did this turn into a prophecy this month – although alas the fall in question was a physical one rather than metaphorical.

Yes, I have taken a tumble since we last spoke – although at my age it’s probably known as “having a fall” – and naturally it was an eminently preventable one caused largely by my failing to learn anything from the many years of race experience I have accumulated.

My fall came during my local 10km run which I entered at the last minute on a whim because it starts and finishes quite literally at the end of my road, and follows the lanes I train on all the time.

I hadn’t entered it any sooner because I was doing a standard distance tri the following week so was saving myself, but at the last minute I thought: “Oh go on then, what the worst that can happen?”

The worst that can happen is you get 6.5km into the race, you clip the bottom of your foot on a bump in the road on a fast downhill section, hit the ground with what someone afterwards described as “a right thump”, give yourself a massive gash in your knee, and do a forward roll which gives you road rash on your hands, shoulder, elbow and ankle.

Oh, and it’s a bump that I knew was there but forgot about because I was going well and had started hammering it.

Oh yes, and I was wearing brand new shoes which I’d only bought the day before and had never worn until I started the race, and which had thicker soles than usual….

All those lessons from over the years: don’t enter stuff at the last minute, don’t get carried away because you’re going well, don’t do anything the week before a race you’ve planned, don’t do anything new on race day… completely ignored by someone who’s been racing for more than two decades. “Failing to learn from the experience,” indeed.

Oh, and here’s another couple of don’ts while we’re at it : don’t go straight to the pub after the race because you get £1 off a pint with your finisher’s medal and because you want to look heroic with blood pouring down your leg, and after a few beers forget to put any dressing or antiseptic on your cuts.

Also don’t go swim training the day after despite being unable to bend your knee properly, because if you do you’ll end up with an infection in your wound which then prevents you from being able to do the triathlon you had planned to do the following week.

Anyway, being triathletes I know there’s only one question you have – did I finish the race? To which the answer is, yes of course I did (in 41min 36s, since you asked).

Having hit the deck – and by the way, the worst bit is that split second when you know you are going down but you haven’t quite hit the tarmac and your brain registers “this is going to hurt!” – and tumble-turned I immediately jumped up, attempted to set a new world swearing record, and sprinted off with blood streaming impressively down my leg causing spectators to audibly take sharp intakes of breath as I ran past.

This was partly down to the power of adrenaline, but mostly down to the fact that some of my mates were close behind and I wanted to get going before they caught me.

Anyway here we are a month on and I am still sporting a rather impressive scab on my knee of the kind that used to get me in trouble with my Mum about 50 years ago.

On the downside I missed doing a tri that I had hopes of doing reasonably well in, but on the plus side my local-legend status has been enhanced in the village by several people since then describing me as “that nutter who went to the pub with his dogs after he cut his leg open”.

I won’t insult your intelligence by claiming to have learned anything from of all this.

Read more from Martyn Brunt on the mental toughness of endurance swimmers.