Dear summer running...here are ten things (of the zillion) I hate about you. Goodbye.
One cursed summer day four years ago I looked at my dog and said to myself “Maybe I should take up running?” and so I did. I am sure past Ned had her reasons, reasons that present Ned cannot recall in the slightest on each and every sweat-tasmic morning I trundle along the brutally hot road and willfully chafe my own thunder thighs. God forbid I choose an extracurricular activity to devote myself to that involves lounging and relaxing, maybe some passive snacking.
No. I had to pick placing one foot in front of the other in a forward motion for miles no matter the weather, at all times of day as my fun thing I do for myself. Stares witheringly at own reflection in mirror.
Here is the thing, I am going to talk about running a lot in these posts and guess what:
I’M NOT EVEN FAST. I’m like moderate to slow paced but what I’m good at is staving off boredom for long periods of time so thems is the situation.
On my most recent long run I composed an ode to running…an odour of a sort to the odorous thing I find myself loving in theory and hating in practice and admittedly loving in practice maybe once every couple of months.
1.) When you are an hour in dying of thirst so you swallow the saliva pooling in your mouth from being an open mouth breather cause sure it’s water. Only to realise it’s salty AF because of the sweat pouring down your face and collecting in aforementioned gaping maw.
2.) When you have a deep wedgie so you try to keep running while adjusting. But your underpants are soaked through with sweat and stuck to your bum so you start doing a hop jiggle move to try to pull them out and end up with a front wedgie instead (if you know you know).
3.) When you wear glasses while running because you can’t wear contacts and they fog up so you take them off but realise you can’t really see oncoming cars on the road so put them on and they fog up and you repeat this process 3-4 times before deciding to succumb to whichever is less troublesome.
4.) When you have one mile more and think oh thank god one mile more and round the corner to see a straight asphalt run in direct sun with no shade and think oh lord one more mile.
5.) When you are at the end of your long run and your house is across the road from you and your body is shutting down and your brain is like SQUEE HOME but you have to wait for the cars to pass and suddenly you get a little too excited about using the potty and you think ah fuck thar she blows.
6.) Those runs where everything is perfect and you feel like you are flying and that you are a run goddess with golden wing tipped shoes and the sun is the ultimate source of energy and life and we are all connected. And then you get home and realise you forgot to unpause your watch after you paused it five minutes in to the run to let the blasted doggo poop and therefore run wasn’t recorded and you don’t know what your pace or time was and it counted for nothing.
7.) Humidity and dew point. Do you dear ones know what a ‘dew point’ is? I did not. I do now.
dew point
noun
The temperature at which air becomes saturated and produces dew.
The temperature at which the air becomes saturated and water vapor condenses to form dew.
My definition: Dew point= the moment when temperature doesn’t matter because now air itself is literal water that you must wade through and it is saturating everything. Underpants? Gone, they are now swamp rash pits. Socks? Gone, they are now blister puddles. Dignity? Gone. You are trundling one foot in front of the other swimming upright in the hopes of making it home alive, breathing audibly as if you have been smoking for 75+ years, verbally cursing aloud without a care for any other living thing on the road.
8.) SWEAT + SUNSCREEN=running straight fire salt into blinking eyes. Trying to wipe eyes with tshirt which you can’t even peel off your skin and now eyes are swollen and you can only squint and pray it ends soon.
9.) Is it sweat or is it pee?
10.) Chafing—>Running shorts that get gobbled up by thunder thighs and now there is a burning rash that rubs everytime you move your legs and now it’s bleeding. I call this the Season of the Perma-Chafe.
That’s all for now folks I am sure I will come up with more now that I live in a place that has forever summer and I no longer have an autumn, winter or spring running season. I may compose a farewell to those lovely times. For now here is an unfiltered photo of me post-summer run approx mid June this past year. Note the fogged glasses, water logged hair and glistening sweat crystals.
