Running Tip #5

Things you need to know:

You need to know I’m running my first ½ marathon in two weeks and that in one of my weekly HIIT workouts, doing sit-ups, my back went out. Funny thing is I can run just fine with a bad back. It actually feels better to run than to walk.

The other thing you need to know is that I’m injury prone. I do face plants, roll my ankle etc all the damn time. I'm not proud of this fact. It hurts. No seriously, it really hurts. My last big race I rolled my ankle 12 times and took three face plants and one of said face plants involved snowplowing on my arms with my legs in the air about 20 yards down a hill. That night I spent an hour picking gravel out of my flesh. We call that race The Trail of Tears.

Now Saturday was the last long run before my race and I did everything right. Mostly. I got enough sleep. I had the perfect breakfast. I forgot my leggings but, like I said, I’m scrappy. Anyhow, I ran the first 12 miles brilliantly, avoided injuring myself for 12 hard ass miles but I’m now, at mile 12, I’m spent and we come up on this section of trail where a small gulley has formed in the middle of the trail and its full of rain water from the previous night. I have two choices, in my exhaustion riddled mind, either spend energy running high on the bank or just go through the water.

I’m not sure how far I got down the stream when my foot went down into a cloudy patch of water and just kept going and then it locked out. I spilled hard, a real yard sale. I think I howled. Stephanie said I was Navy SEAL tough to just pop back up and keep running but the truth was the water was freaking ice cold, really ice cold like frostbite burn your skin cold so staying down was not an option and not getting back to the car fast was also not an option. I ran my balls off.

Everything went numb eventually and I finished strong. Wait for it…

… Here’s the tip:

You’re probably thinking the tip is Don’t step into anything you can’t see the bottom of and anywhere else in the running community that would be the tip but not here. The tip is this, sometimes a bad thing like a wrenchingly painful fall can turn out to be a good thing. Don’t get me wrong. I could barely stand after we finished running. I was, in fact, miserable all day because my back hurt so much but the next day and even now my back feels great. I’m not advocating this as an alternative to physical therapy or back cracking but in this case, it worked for me.

Running Tip #4

They call it training for a reason. You can stop if you need to stop and correct something. Let's say your shoes untied or you're lost or, for instance, your iPod Shuffle dies and you need to figure out if the batteries ran out of juice or the headphones just came loose like they did that one time on Jacksonville Beach. Stop running and figure it out. It's easy peasy. What you don't want to do is be 25 feet in front of two well know Tahassee runners and roll your ankle because you're trying to get your Shuffle to work while you're still running. Its dangerous and you look like a jackass.

Running Tip #3

Let's say you have a favorite playlist for your iPod Shuffle and the night before your run, you load on a bunch of songs but instead of loading them into the playlist and then onto the shuffle, you go right to the Shuffle.

And the next morning you synch the Shuffle to the playlist. This will effectively remove the songs from the Shuffle. Just a heads up on that.

Running Tip #1

When you are about to enter a Porta-john, don't cram your cell phone and brand new Punisher skull cap into the shallow side pocket of your Adidas track jacket...

I walked in and locked the door behind me and looking at my options, remembered that some runners are women and turning to the left to use the urinal, heard a faint... ploop. And knew, instantly, what had just shot out of my pocket and into the commode.

I loved that phone but I really loved that hat. It was bad ass. It made me look a little like that biker Opie on Sons of Anarchy. I love Sons of Anarchy.

I knew it was gone.

I looked down the hole black watery hole and my sad little phone cast in blue commode water, lit up under as if to cry out, help me. And everyone has asked me if I reached in to get it out and to that I've said no. Who would do that and why.

Sadly, I would. Just for a few panicked moments, I clung to the idea things would be alright. I could dry it. Use Julia's rice bag idea to get every last bit of moisture out of it, maybe even use that sanitary spray Pola has in the kitchen for spray the germs off our counter tops. All my pictures, notes for stories, phone numbers...

Now to my credit once I realized the phone's state, I let it slip back into the stinky depths - its hand out stretch, its fingertips straining toward life as oblivion wrapped it into the great goodnight...

Okay, that's horseshit but you get the point. It was a big sad moment for me. And worse, the day hadn't even started so there was a race to watch and friends to cheer on and the inevitable photos to be taken where everyone would be all open and smiling and, as usual, I would look like a real tool, arms cross and scowling.