Rope burn: the explanation

Hmmm. That came out as a grainy shot and makes it look like a really minor wound.

We were training in Queen’s Park with Instructor Karim, doing fitness training. What this involved was tying a couple of car tires one behind the other on a rope behind you and then running up a slight incline for about 80 meters. It is reasonably tough and gets your lungs working like a bellows and your legs pumping like pistons.

The rope burn came in when we dropped back to a single tire each and played british bull-dogs with a twist. All of us bar 2 (Instructor Adam and I - yes we are both called Adam) were in the middle. One of us had to grab the tire, the other the person, in order to get them to join us in the middle. We were using nylon rope and one of the strong runners managed to slip by me and as he did so I grabbed for the rope behind him in a last ditch attempt to catch back up with him.

Any of you who have ever used nylon rope will have just cringed, it slips easily and heats fast under friction. My fingers and hand have two lines of skin which look like it has just been grafted on in a plasic surgery operation done by a madman - the hole in the skin is where my skin broke and it is now weeping continually.

Oh well, the joys of leg strength training. I should have it patched up and usable by tomorrow morning’s training and use of a keyboard is (obviously) not impaired, so Monday morning should be fine too.