The Helsinki Roller Marathon 2004 is now over, and it's time for the gory bits. I had a perfectly good run of eight years not falling on skates. Somewhere around 7 km into the race in a bit of downhill I fell, and fell with style. I was about to pass a skater in front of me, and looked over my left shoulder to see if there's room to pass. I hadn't looked at the road carefully enough, I think. During the backwards glance, my left skate pretty much stopped, and over I went. After two rolls I counted my parts and continued.
Total time for the Marathon: 1:32:33.
I sprained the right middle and ring fingers and my right pectoral. The rest is just lost skin. The only damage to the skating portion of the body was a grazed knee, so I'm not going to claim more than 30 seconds for this fall: the time spent on the ground and the time to accelerate. I even caught the paceline from the end of which I fell, but couldn't keep up with them after about 20 km.
The weather is sunny, about 28 C (82 F), and we lost a lot of water. I drank about 1,5 liters during the race and still felt significantly dehydrated towards the end. Pure water won't absorb much faster, though, so there wasn't much to do.