Weekend workout leaves Mayor Daley with welt near eye

Warning: Exercise can be hazardous to your health.

Mayor Daley showed up at a news conference today to announce plans to expand winter heating assistance services with a welt near his right eye apparently suffered during a weekend work-out.

Mayoral press secretary Jacquelyn Heard said Daley suffered the facial injury while using a weight machine.

Although it looked like a deep wound, Heard described the cut near the mayor’s right eyebrow as minor and said it did not require stitches.

“As he typically does over the weekend, he was working out using a weight machine and accidentally grazed the side of his face with the equipment,” Heard said.

“Had it been a deep cut, he probably would have required stitches. It was a grazing.”

It wasn’t the first time that Daley had been the worse for wear after working up a sweat.

In 1998, the mayor ripped the skin off his kneecap when his mountain bike skidded off a gravel path outside Berrien Springs, Mich. At the time, Daley was mid-way through a 120-mile journey.

“When I used to run, you would run, like, 10 miles. Then of course, you had to run 20,” Daley told the Chicago Sun-Times during a 1999 interview.

“Same thing with a bike. I did 20 miles, then 50, then 80 and 90, and then I said, ‘Well, I can do 100.’ And then I'd do 100 and say, ‘I can go another 10 miles,’ and I’d turn around and do 120. I could ride a bike for nine hours. I enjoy the challenge.”