Yesterday, I went for my morning run, just like I do every day. Then I got home and drove to the house we bought to meet with the electrician. I was crossing the street, not doing anything fancy, and I felt my foot just kind of twist and give out. The next thing I knew, I was sprawled on the street.

I knew something unfortunate had happened because my ankle was throbbing, but honestly, walking and falling down doesn’t exactly sound like a recipe for orthopedic disaster. Still, I figured I should check it out, so I went to the doctor and got an Xray.

“Well, it’s broken,’ he said cheerfully, after reading the film.

“You’ve got to be kidding.” That I’d actually broken a bone in such an unspectacular fall struck me as horribly embarrassing. “How am I going to run?”

“You’re not,” he said. “I am going to give you an air cast. With any luck, you can be back running in a month, six weeks tops.”

I know there are people out there with way more egregious injuries, people for whom recovery will never happen. I know I have a lot of nerve griping about this. But what I don’t know is anyone as addicted to running as I am.

But then, maybe I am looking at this the wrong way. Maybe I have to see it not as an obstacle, but as an opportunity. Maybe fate is trying to tell me that now is the perfect time to focus on something else, something I’ve overlooked until now, like my upper body.