Are you blogging this? My work-out buddy asks me this question every Tuesday night, usually in the empty high school parking lot where our running group meets for the warm-up.
We are both back in training to successfully complete an inexplicably popular 10k race in April. Success to us means not dying, peeing, puking our shitting our pants during the effort.
We're at risk of doing all four of these things, although perhaps not in that order. Her and I are not natural athletes. I can barely be referred to as natural anything. Proof that our bodies are not built for long or short bursts of running lies in our stomachs.
The aching shins and hips are to be expected, but complaining that a hip hurts or a knee feels out of whack actually helps us feel athletic. We have sports injuries! From actual sports! No, really!
We know that to remedy these aches and pains we need to focus on strengthening something in our bodies called "a core." Apparently this would be the middle section of my body that has always given me problems. The top half of this section I'm always wishing to grow bigger, but it's the lower half that keeps expanding.
There are classes just for core training, and exercises we could do at home. We know this because we've discussed doing both, and these conversations are exhausting enough.
Besides, core training won't do much to help our stomach situations. If I say the word 'running' to my friend she has to poo. Just like that. Prior to actually going for a run, she's been known to poo up to four separate times in anticipation. I've proposed that she doesn't need running to lose weight. We just have to talk about it and the pounds will fall right off of her.
My problem is of the more liquid variety. My bladder shrinks accordingly with every running step forward. Should I ever run a marathon, that organ might just shrivel and vanish from my body completely.
The problem isn't actually shrinkage, it's bouncing. In some runners, the colon and bladder can "jostle." I would have thought internal organs would be somehow better anchored, but it seems there's a lot more free floating going on in there than I would have believed.
Nevertheless, my friend and I joined a running group, and that group may already be sorry.
Every Tuesday we're divided into three smaller groups. One group is a handful of crazy people who head out for a casual 15k every Tuesday night, and a second group are runners who are considerably more advanced in their training for the big race. My friend and I belong to the third group, who are baby stepping our way through a beginners run/walk interval program.
We're supposed to do our warm-up exercises segmented within the larger group, and every Tuesday evening my friend and I confuse where we're supposed to be, and in the process confuse at least a dozen other people. One would think we'd recognize other members of our beginners group by now, but my excuse is that it's dark out by the time we get there.
Every Tuesday the warm-up is halted at some point so that the confusion caused by my friend and I can be sorted out. It happens when we argue over what section of the parking lot we're supposed to be in, causing dozens of eavesdroppers to doubt themselves.
I'll instinctively join a group because they're doing arm circles which I like, but another group is doing leg lunges, which I really don't. My friend likes walking on her toes, so she'll go over with that group. By the time everything is halted because we're still publicly arguing whether we're supposed to be here or over there, half the members in every group changed places.
We've both been very sick for the past few weeks, but I'm proud of ourselves because we've kept up our running schedule. It's not so much perseverance, but the knowledge that there's no way in hell we'll persevere if we stop now.
This has made for some really awful runs recently. I have a cold that has lingered so long, I can honestly say that as of today it's outlasted the majority of my relationships.
Although I seem to be on the mend (this isn't a scientific determination, but I no longer sound like James Earl Jones so that should count for something), I've been barking like a seal when I try to breathe deeply. My friend has had the stomach flu, and has been in serious danger of something spectacular happening out of one or both ends the last few times we've been out.
Neither of us have ever been in danger of landing in a Gatorade commercial at the best of times. Rather, we've considered producing our own line of at at home work-out DVDs that stick a little closer to reality.
Instead of hard-bodied women who've never known the pleasures of carbohydrates smiling like beauty queens the entire way through an hour long work-out, there would be us; four steps behind the routine, substituting the eff word for every happy cheer raised by the cardio-bots and tripping over our coffee tables. It will retail for $9.99.
We're upfront about our suffering. During our Tuesday practice runs, the official "run leaders" will occasionally take a moment to stop and yell encouragement to us beginner runners who are slogging by. There are actually people who respond to all of the, "Good jobs!" and "You're doing greats!" with happy cheering noises.
We are not those people. This past Tuesday, a run leader made the mistake of hollering out a hearty, "How are ya doing?" as we passed. My friend yelled back that she was going to puke and wanted to die.
She lived, and I'm so glad. Without her I might quit, and it's incredible how much worse a sense of failure can feel than a feeling of actually wanting to die due to lactic acid build-up.
She helps see me through, and so this Tuesday, I'm happy my answer will finally be,"Yes. I am blogging this."
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