I should have known this morning wouldn’t have gone as planned the moment I relaized I forgot my cell phone at home.

Sunday morning was a group run out at Murphy-Hanrehan park down in Savage. We met up with a bunch of folks that were planning a nice and easy 15 miles. My wife, as well as a few others, planned on bailing a bit early, but I wanted to stick it out for the full 15. We hit the trail after applying a generous amount of bug spray and fell into a nice easy pace up and down the roller coaster hills on the north side of the park.

At about 4.5 miles my wife bid me farewell to wander around and make her way back to the car. She hasn’t been doing a ton of running lately, but between biking and stairs at her new job, she was feeling really satisfied with her hill performance. I kept up with the group and made it to the horse camp, which is the halfway point of the 15 miles. My running had been OK, and I felt pretty good, but one thing that was bugging me is how many times I had rolled my ankle. By the time we reached horse camp I had rolled my right ankle four different time.

We left horse camp and started out towards the prairie section. A mile into this portion I rolled my ankle a FIFTH time, and this time it hurt. I stopped and walked gingerly a bit while a few folks caught up to me. I started walking it off, but decided that after 5 ankle rolls, the universe was telling me that it was time to head back to the car. I said goodbye to my friends, and assured them I would be OK and started the long trek back to civilization.

It was still about a 2.5 mile walk back to my car, and I couldn’t call my wife and have her come pick me up because… you guessed it… my phone was at home. Almost the entire way back is on a dirt road, so I didn’t need to be concerned with footing at all. It was a slow slog, but I made it back without incident. I relayed my story to my wife and we headed out to get home and cleaned up.

Oh, and we stopped at a gas station and I realized that my wallet was missing half of my stuff because I took it out yesterday to carry on my bike ride. Thank goodness I still had one credit card left in there. Despite all of this, it was still a great morning to be outside with great people.