Discussion: Most unusual injury?

After hearing about Shep's withdrawal from Day 3 at easter due to the thumb injury he sustained i was wondering what is the most unusual or funniest (not that Shep's was funny) injury you have heard of associated with orienteering?

I'm sure there is some crackers out there so lets have em.

P.S
I suppose illnesses are counted in this one so Fat Rat your illness from the monkey's at the zoo is legit.

In the days when I published the squad newsletter I used to have a feature for 'best injury of the month' (and a few of them found their way into the Australian Orienteer).

My personal favourites were Andy Simpson doing his ankle tripping over a roll of ankle tape on his loungeroom floor, and Nic Plunkett-Cole straining a hamstring while "racing" the dinosaur at a museum (I've forgotten whether it was the Australian Museum or Questacon). Neither of these actually occurred during orienteering events, though (nor did my best effort, of being knocked off my bike by a horse and cart in Swanston Street in central Melbourne in 1998).

My personal best in an orienteering event was treading on the handle of a cricket pitch roller hidden in long grass in a park race in Warwick in 2000 (result: sprained ankle, and then a stress fracture when I tried to come back too soon on the ankle).

Everyone knows the story of kangaroo hitting me while I was stretching at the start of the (2004?) Easter at Ipswich. Result was a small tear in rib cartilage, enough to make it painful to breath heavily.

running into a tree 3 seconds into the French Middle distance champs, 4 staples and an egg for my pains:
http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~ndobbs/crap/sexyyy.jpg
stupidest start corridor ever

My injury was a head cut as a result of a tree limb coming down when, on the run down a hill, I pushed the tree aside. I now know for a fact that when a tree falls in the forest it DOES NOT make a sound until it hits the head of the orienteer below.

Multiple bee stings when I chose to ignore the sign "Warning: Bee Hives Ahead". Also an unfortunate orienteer at APOC2002 in Alberta told me he got a stick up his backside ...the medics checked him out and said everything was OK.

Not so unusual, but my reaction might be...

I was on a training run, bounding confidently through a "Open Land with Scattered Trees". As I crossed over a trail I was trying to exhibit my best orienteering form for the curious hikers that were eyeing me. Ten meters past them, I am sure they were startled to see me, the supremely lithe and graceful gazelle, turn tail and run straight at them, flailing my arms and screaming like a maniac.

I had disturbed hornets nest in the ground and had only a few painful bee stings to show for it though I am sure that everyone enjoyed the show I put on! Thinking about my embarrassing display stings somewhat even now.

While on the run, I glanced to the right to check the progress of another orienteer and the end of a branch neatly entered my left ear and slammed my eardrum. No permanent damage done, but the pain was exquisite.

The eardrum story sounds close to (but not as bad as) the rather serious damage sustained by a Norwegian elite runner at a World Cup last year, requiring surgical reconstruction of her middle ear.... She's fortunate to be able to keep on doing the sport at all, I think.

I think Mike Smith and Eric Bone trying to occupy the same point in the space-time continuum (WOC 2006) should fall somewhere on such a list.

Punched control on "barb wire fence" at local meet.

Planned next leg, took one step forward, and walked into that fence. Nick on leg was minor - no time to build speed anyway.

The only things I've ever injured orienteering have been my pride and dignity. Sometimes only one, often both and each repeatedly.

I came off a field at full tilt at Warwick Park, PA and into an invisible strand of barbed wire. One spike in the top of each thigh and a perfect front flip and roll. Two matched puncture wounds, well worthy of the followup tetnus shot.

Years ago in the Billygoat (hmm, somewhere in NH I think) I was cruising down a hill and tried to pass between two trees that had a strand of barbed wire strung between them. Apparently the only bit left was the section between these 2 trees and I didn't see it. One second I was running down the hill and the next I was rebounding right back up it. It caught me right in the belly-button, which in retrospect was probably about the safest possible spot to hit it. Oddly enough none of the dozen other folks I was running with even turned around to see what happened or if I was ok. Maybe I should have screamed "It's got me, it's got me!!" or something, but I was much too surprised at the time to say anything at all.

Ok I'll enter a second one. I think this one eventually appeared in ONA, but a couple years ago in a night-O in Rochester, NY, Bob Ireland apparently head-butted a deer, or perhaps it was vice-versa. I must have just missed it because when he told me when and where it happened, it was only a short distance from where I'd passed him running in opposite directions on a trail. His face was messed up pretty badly and he was taken to the hospital for evaluation.

I think Bob Ireland's probably wins for most unusual (at least of those I've seen so far).

I know someone who drove 14 hours to a meet, started Day 1, got to the first control, headed off to the second and promptly ran into a rather large branch which punctured the upper inner thigh deeply enough to require stitches. It wasn't a fun return trip.

At a sprint event at the AIS in Canberra I was running through an area (for the second time) and went to jump over a small chainlink fence around the edge of the grass. It was probably only 20-30 cm off the groud, I've jumped over bigger logs.... Anyway, my toe must have caught it and down I went, landing on my arm and dislocating my shoulder. While I sat there trying to work out why my arm was hurting so much, I was calling for help. Strangely enough in a place where you'd think there'd be lots of people around, I had to wait until another Orienteer came by for help.

Ran into a single strand of barbwire at waist height on the Sailors Diggings map. Wire was old and weathered so it wasn't easily seen. Folded double over the wire and ended up on the ground with a line of puncture marks accross the stomach.

Personal favourite was louie the fly who slide down a large sloping sheet of bare rock on his backside. Had nylon jocks on and the heat welded the jocks to his arse.

About ten years ago, during a race, I saw a guy standing with one leg stuck in a crack in the granite on the Swedish west coast. I stopped to help him, but someone else had already found him and went away to get assistance. I heard later that the fire department had to come and rescue him.

a swede (annika?) got hit by a car/bus just after winning a WOC relay medal in the Ukraine... busted her ankle.

At least barbed wire isn't concertina razor wire (happy memories from West Point).

At Tiomila in 1973 one of the first leg runners stepped into a hole and broke his leg about 100 meters after the start - he never even made it out into the forest and his team had to DNF.

At Easter in Victoria in the early 90s (Ballarat I think), I visited the loo before heading to the start. This was no Portaloo, rather a tent with a seat over a hole in the ground. As I was standing up, I cut my forehead on the split pin holding the tent to the frame....blood everywhere! Had to visit First Aid BEFORE my run and eventually ran with a large bandage wrapped around my head.

I don't think any actual injury resulted, but it certainly made for an amusing show: PG was moving pretty fast for an old guy at the US Team Trials sprint in 2006 when he entered a copse of newly-planted evergreens, about 2-3m in height. Each of these was being supported by several guy wires. Thinking there was plenty of room between the trees to run, he decided to do a little map reading and ran full speed into one of the wires. The resulting catapult may well have been the longest time his own power has had him out of contact with the earth.

Within .5 k at the Minnegoat a few years ago, I slipped and fell as I was reaching the second to last control. As I stood up I realized I had dislocated my finger. Finishing the course with it out of place was not difficult, finding someone to help me put it back in, was. MNOC's president Ian went beyond the call of duty and popped it back in.

Watching him and others respond to the popping sound was well worth the pain of the situation.

Several years ago, I was going up a steep muddy slope when by foot (which had somehow got above my hand) slipped, and I stabbed my hand with the spike on my o-shoe. I still have a scar to prove it!

Barb wire fences seem to account for a lot of these. A few years ago, I had just passed a female orienteer going the same way when I reached a fence. Crossing it quickly, I got caught & proceeded to rip the entire crotch out of my O' pants directly in front of her. Fortunately nothing injured but pride.

I'm probably also the one Bill Jarvis remembers getting a stick up the nether regions. I was crossing trhough a jumble of fallen pine trees, when I slipped and fell backwards into a sitting position on one of the fallen logs.. . landing directly on a short but sharp broken branch end. I don't think the medic at the finish was too thrilled when I came through the finish & dropped my pants to have him inspect for damage. Minimal, but it sure was a pain in the a-- for a couple days.

This discussion includes a lot of great stuff that somehow never makes it into our marketing literature!

I wonder how the injury statistics for orienteering compare to other sports. I'll bet we're on the top of the heap in the puncture wound catagory.

I recall Barbie recounting snake bite at O-ringen. I tried to search old posts but I did not find it anymore.

Orienteering is sometimes no better than a sharp stick in the eye.

The first half of my story is pretty common: I took a stick in the eye and the end broke off. It was shortly before a spectator control, so I punched and went to the on-site ambulance, but no one was home (in hindsight - I wasn't seeing so clearly then - I guess that would have been a DQ), so I continued on and finished up. I got back and the ambulance folks flushed my eye, no sign of any more stick.

Now, the rest of the story: I had a lot of trouble sleeping that night, due to eye irritation. I got up for the meet the next morning and saw a speck in the corner of my eye. I had someone try to get at it, and a whopping 1.6 cm of stick was pulled out of nowhere. Good times!

so two strange injuries for me:

1) during my first Night O i jumped into a pit only to realize that there were tree roots sticking out and i punctured a hole in between my thumb and finger on the stick. it bled so much that i couldn't read my map (especially in dark) so i had to find someone else with a map and map memorize my way to the finish. i still have the scar today.

2) there was this one area which had lots of spikey seed things and somehow a tiny little thorn was on my hand and i wiped the seat out of my eye only to replace the sweat with the thorn. that night i woke up with a sharp pain in my eye but not knowing where the thorn was. after two weeks of visits to the hospital they found the thorn in my eyelid. so everytime i closed my eye i was being scratched by it.

in france i was cold enough once to punch my finger instead of the control card... blood came out in the pin-prick pattern of the last control

Is it just me or is it getting uncomfortable reading some of these injury stories? My eye is starting to hurt.

Orienteers should be sure to keep their tetanus shots up to date.

On the Stanford University campus, there's a small circular pond surronded by a concrete ledge. On one side, there's some bushes mapped as a thicket. We had a meet there some years ago which had a control on the thicket. I approached the control from the other side of the pond, which was covered by water plants. Thinking the water plants were ground cover, and the pond just a landscaped area, I made a beeline for the control on the other side.

As my feet hit the water, I realized my mistake and made one of those moves you see in the cartoons when the character realizes that the edge of the cliff has fallen away. Just as ineffective in my case. My foot hit the bottom of the pond, slid in the mud, and turned enough to sprain it. I climbed out of the water, soaked, muddy and covered in water plants, and hobbled back to the finish.

That pond is since known as "the slime pond". Others have fallen into it during our annual Stanford Night-O. To my knowledge, though, I'm the only one who has fallen into it in daylight.

Ok - I didn't end up injured from this one, but it was nearly very serious. Got to a creek a couple of controls into my course, which I had expected to be dry, like most in Western Australia. It was a few metres wide, waist deep and flowing really fast and looked worse in either direction, so thought I'd just try to wade it. I made it to about the middle, was washed off my fet and downstream till I hit a tree, at which point I was able to clamber out on the same side I had entered it from. Briefly considered a second attempt at crossing before realising I no longer had my map and decided to run back to the start to warn others as I had been the first or second starter for the day.
I was pretty put out when the starter took no notice of me, but apprently by the time the next competitor came through it was down to an ankle deep trickle. I just happened to get there just after the upstream dam wall had burst...

At a Victorian relays an orienteer (who shall remain unnamed) was usffering the effects of a cold virus. He decided he needed to suck on some mentholated cough lollies while mid way through his course. With no pocket in his pants, he tied the lollies into a handkerchief and pinned this to the inside of his pants. He was later observed walking in an awkward gait up the finish chute, legs splayed wide apart. The area inside his pants had become quite humid and the lollies had liquefied and drained down into his scrotum, resulting in a very painful and emabrrassing condition to a very private organ.

This fall was during a run, not while orienteering, but I've never forgotten it. It was a 10+ mile run with a couple of my cross country teammates so rather than run on the pavement I kept to the grass. Unfortunately, the grass was high enough that it obscured one of those plastic bands that keeps stacks of newspapers together. In the same stride I stepped on the band with one foot and caught it with the toe of my other foot...I went down so fast that no one even saw my fall, just my humiliating face-plant. Fortunately, I didn't injure my legs at all, but landing face-first gave me a bloody nose and a nice brush burn on my chin.

That reminds of of the time a small stone lodged between the front wheel and fork of one of my rollerskis, just as I was committing my weight to that ski. It was absolutely amazing how quickly the pavement rose up to hit me in the nose.

At least barbed wire isn't concertina razor wire (happy memories from West Point).

This is my first clear memory of Neil. I was cruising through the woods when I heard someone call my name. I looked to the right and saw Neil standing there in open forest maybe 20m away, in a running position, but stock-still. I was puzzled for a second until he said "Concertina wire!". Rusted wire, total camouflage effect — took a few minutes to get him disentangled.

mikeminium did not mention his more serious injury, a face plant on level ground that resulted in serious injury and medical attention.

I seem to recall that Spike once got a locust thorn through the bottom of his shoe that went into his foot and made it impossible to remove the shoe.

My own barbed-wire incident was at a night-O when I was running with just a penlight (to read the map) under a full moon. Crossing a field, I ran full speed into a north line. A five-strand barbed north line. That left a big permanent scar on my left thigh, but I still won the race.

Since we are trading barbed wire stories:
* Running at race pace I saw the orange ribbon on the lower strand of wire and leaped in full-hurdle pose into the unmarked upper strand of wire. I did the cartoon "Bwooong!" stretch of the wire in the forward direction, followed by the "Whooosh!" recoil in the backward direction, and the "Slam!" of my body into the ground. It was painful and amusing at the same time and I have two barb scares on my abdomen to show for it.
* Four stitches this Feb. due to a random string of barbed wire that I tried to run through because I thought it was only a vine.
I have not had any problem keeping my tetanus shot up to date.

Another barbed wire story -- on short course competition at Round Mtn. in Lake George, CO some years ago, my older son (~14 or 15 at the time?) managed to slice the inside of his knee on the barbed wire that needed to be crossed between the access road and the start area. We were very lucky there was an orienteer/EMT at the scene (Tom Moran) who cleaned/patched him up very nicely for us. Bad parents that we are, we went out and ran our short courses before we took him to Woodland Park's emergency center for stitches...

ok these stories have made me now thank my mom for making me get my tetanus shot updated a few years ago. I fought her so badly about it though (i'm EXTREMELY scared of needles!!) but now i guess i see why she made me get it.

I have been trying to think of an unusual injury that i have had but cannot think of one. painful injuries but not unusual. For example just over a year ago i was running a training course and i decided i was going to hop this small iced over creek. Turns out though that the creek was bigger than i thought and my left leg breaks through the ice and i got a huge bruise. I find out about 6 or so months later when it was still bugging me when i ran that i bruised the back of my knee cap when i fell.

Oh and funny fall at the scottish 6-day last year (and yes sadly it is on tap thanks to my dad) I had just punched the control before the GO control and it was in a bunch of rocks and braken. Well i ran forward towards the last control and all of a sudden i'm laying down in the braken. I didn't notice that the rock i was running on when ended was such a big drop i thought it was going to be much smaller. So in the video you see me one second and the next it looks like i'm swallowed by braken and then i appear a fer seconds later.

Ah, those locust thorns are wicked. I got one through the bottom of my shoe at a Georgia Navigator Cup a few years ago. After completely undoing the laces, I was finally able to get the shoe off, but I was unable to pull the thorn out of my shoe. It stuck up several mm on the inside. So, I ended up finishing barefoot in the mud... definitely a reason to keep tetnaus shots up to date! A few minutes with pliers eventually managed to get the thorn out of the shoe, but there was no way it could have been done in the forest.

Its possible for injuries to be beneficial. I used to suffer from TMJ syndrome (a psychological, neurological, myofascial (depending on who you ask) confluence of badnesses relating to the nerves/muscles around the upper jaw bone). One doctor after another could not solve the problem (and the literature suggests that only 25% of cases are treated successfully/resolve themselves).

But, running at an O meet in northern NJ, crossing a stream I fell and hit my chin hard on a rock. The blood was everywhere and the ER beckoned, but the trauma pushed the jawbone up and dislodged whatever cruft was causing the TMJ, and I've been free of it since.

I wasn't hurt on this one but it was strange.
While running down a very steep hill near Cleveland many years ago, I tripped and somehow ended up with my ankle caught in a notch in a branch and me hanging helplessly upside down, head down the slope.
A very polite cadet from West Point witnessed this and shouted "Holy s***,..... SIR".
He then asked if it would be ok to release me from my predicament.
After I agreed, he lifted my foot out and I tumbled down the hill. At this point he shouted "oh s***, sorry .....SIR".

LOL! I had that happen once when I found myself hanging upside down from a tree with downhill skis on. There was no way I could reach up to undo the boots. I wish there had been one of those nice cadets around: "Can I take you down... MA'AM?"

This one would have likely been hilarious to watch: Some a**hole had put a control in a clearing(may have just been white/less green) surround by dark green. I had come through the thinnest part which had a stone wall separating the clearing from the green. I got up a some speed just before the wall and hurtled over it, only to catch my foot, and more detrimentally, my other foot on an unmapped barbed wire fence next to the wall, needless to say a nice face plant ensued.

Another day, I was running through some open forest and I was checking my map and didn't see a deep but narrow depression as I ran into it, to an onlooker It would have looked like I ran off a cliff into a hole. I hyper extended my already bad knee. I am sure that they problem heard my curses on the other side of the map.

Not orienteering related, but a number of years ago I was skiing in Sugarloaf Maine, with my family. My father and I decided to leave a friend of the family to try and catch the last lift up. I got to the bottom of the hill and saw my father lying on the ground(his has been skiing for 30+ years so this is unusual), so being a ski patroller at another hill at the time I took off my skis and walked a couple hundred metres back up to him. By the time the time the local patrol had arrived my mother and I were making fun of him beause he had told each of us in turn that a different part of his body hurt(arm, then shoulder then ribs). Turned out he had injured all three by falling when stopped.

Many years ago, an injury prone friend of mine was training for JWOC. He was on a training camp and had completed his days training without incident. While the other orienteers went out to play a game of football he thought he wouldn't risk injury, but stay in & play pool instead. He was just about to play a shot when he sneezed suddenly, put his back out, tore a hamstring and missed out on JWOC....

There was a 100 meter dark spot on a tarmac cycle-path where the street-light was out (on a training competition on winter streets in Sundsvall, Sweden). In the middle of that dark part of the street one control happened to be located (no head-lamps was allowed on this competition). The problem was that a concrete block (making sure that no cars can drive on the cycle-street) was placed 15 meters after the control, so when running at full speed out from the control suddenly I found myself flying through the air and landing hard on my knees and elbows on the hard tarmac. I still have nightmares about that concrete block and the feeling of running into it at full speed. I was out for about a week while my wounds were healing. Many more runners at the competition injured themselves in the same manner... :-)

You know, at the start of this thread there was reference to Fat Rat getting ill, apparently due to some activity involving monkeys. I'd like to hear more about that one... I think.

Also, Glenn, I don't know the details of you getting hit by a kangaroo. That almost never happens in Texas.

And finally, how do you Aussies avoid getting bit by the 13 of the world's 10 most deadliest snakes that live in the land of OZ?

Qld related injuries:
Firstly a few years back at the 2004 Qld champs, Rooey managed to run straight into a stick about mid way through her course. She thought nothing of it until she got back to the finish when she saw that the top end of the stick was still sticking out of her shin. This required her to go straight to hospital to get the remainder of the stick out.

I few years back while training at Leslie Dam (which is known for its awful jumping cactus) i rolled underneath a fence and felt a a sharp pain in my foot. i looked down and saw that a jumping cactus was on the top of my shoe. with effort i managed to kick the cactus off. however when i got back to camp i realised that one of the barbs of the cactus was still in my shoe and still in my foot. I accidently broke the barb to get my shoe off and managed to pull the barb out of my big toe (which was a full cm lodged in). Any way after a few days i begin to feel pain in my toe and it begins to swell up... i went to the doctors who said that the the hook at the end of the barb was still in my toe and infected. that meant surgery and i now have a very lovely 6cm scar on my foot.

At West Point about 10 years ago (at the Roundup), I was running fast down a rocky fill area on the last day. One of the large rocks tilted under my weight and sent me head over heels. Not only did I get scraped on the rocks, the area had been used as a dump and was filled with rusted scrap metal and flattened steel barrels. These neatly sliced my shoulder, forearm and leg. I kept going for the second half of the course, despite considerable blood leaking out. It was worth the cries of "Medic!" by the cadets at the finish line, as by then my entire arm was coated with blood. Thanks to Lex for a couple stiches in the arm and the leg. Unfortunately, she was short on numbing agent, so the leg stiches went in raw.

Not sure if it is interesting or funny, but at the Pawtuckaway Mega-O in 2005 I made it through 29 of the 203 controls before misjudging the flexibility of a relatively slender tree stem. The plan was to push it out of the way in order to maintain my current velocity. Instead it deflected me in mid-air and pushed me just enough to the left that my head hit another, much bigger stem in what can only be described as a head-on collision.

Due to the amount of blood coming out of the laceration on my forehead, a few people stopped to help and one person was nice enough to walk me back to the start/finish.

I ended up with something like 5 deep stitches and 11 more on top. The scar is nearly unnoticeable now though.

And finally, how do you Aussies avoid getting bit by the 13 of the world's 10 most deadliest snakes that live in the land of OZ?
Simple, it´s only the survivors that log on AP...

I have a deal with the snakes........
If they stay out of my way i wont annoy them enough to bite me. has worked out pretty good so far.

To be frank i havent really seen heaps of snakes while racing. Only the odd brown snake but they are usually sunning themselves and not interested in a fight when i see them.

My first time in Harriman I heard some loud rattling in the blueberry bushes as I was getting close to a control. I was pretty sure the control was 30-50m straight ahead, but because of the persistent rattling I turned 90 degrees left and went to look for it in that direction instead. After a couple of minutes of trying to make the control appear in the wrong location, I convinced myself that I needed to go back to the blueberry bushes, but made sure to stay a good distance away from the point where I had originally turned.

The control was where I had assumed it to be, and if it weren't for the snake I probably would have spiked it.

Another time I found a huge (> 3ft) garter snake coiled up on a rock and hissing. I was a bit surprised since this non-poisonous species is usually pretty skittish.

Snakes are generally pretty sensitive to vibration, so I imagine that when orienteerers come stomping most of them go into hiding.

I have heard a few stories of (rattle)snakes being found during control pick-up in CA, which makes sense since the afternoon is a great time for sunbathing once hordes of orienteerers are no longer crashing through the woods.