I’ll Make My Own Lemonade

I got back to NYC late last night. Woohoo!  Now I can catch up with my blog reading and commenting and you can catch up with commenting on mine (comment-whore hint).  Although Mom kept me busy shopping, cleaning out gutters, and installing an Odd Boy alert system, I managed to stick to my running schedule.  But not without mishaps.

I went for a run yesterday and got lost.  In a subdivision.  What was supposed to be a three-mile run turned into a four-and-a-half-mile slog through a tangled knot of streets with names like Dancing Deer Lane, Dancing Deer Lane Court, and Dancing Deer Court Lane Partridge in a Pear Tree.  Is it any wonder I got lost?  I bet even Santa, being the deer expert that he is, loses his way in this neighborhood. I would feel bad for the poor toyless tykes of this neighborhood except not one of those little fuckers had a lemonade stand set up yesterday in the ninety-degree heat.  What’s up with that?  How do these kids make money?  They can’t all be mowing lawns at $65 a pop. So, no lemonade yesterday, and thus I made sure that Santa will get lost in this neighborhood by switching all the street signs.

My running times were slower this week.  It could have been because of the god awful humidity but it’s more likely the lack of snark material on my run.  There was no one to distract me from my collapsing lungs.  And the only change in scenery from one cookie cutter house to the next was the color of the Honda Civic in the driveways.  I did not come across any other runners this week.  There were kids on bikes, a few skateboarders, and one rollerblade.  No, not someone on a pair of rollerblades but a kid peg-legging his way down the street on one rollerblade.  It was so pathetic that I can’t muster a snide aside even now.  Okay, I snarked a little at the time but it was so lame, I’m not even going to share it with you.  I did see one old lady with a cane walking on the sidewalk.  She did not look like she posed an OLWW-type threat.  She was just going to the mailbox but I made a note to myself to keep an eye on her just in case.

I should’ve brought my iPod to help me pick up the pace but I’ve been running without it lately.  Trying to keep the earbuds in my tiny ears was just too distracting and I like being able to hear my footsteps and my breathing.  I can also hear the water sloshing around in the water bottle strapped to my waist.  The fact that I have to use a bungee cord to get the thing around my waist is a drawback.  It feels like a corset or an external gastric bypass.  The waist belt is so tight that I can’t breathe much less drink. And if I’ve had any liquids in the last month or so, the pressure of the belt as it jostles my waistline sends ripples to my bladder making sure that I have to pee when I am at the furthest point away from home.  Being one to plan not only for zombie invasions but other worst-case scenarios, I have this potentially embarrassing situation already figured out.  First, drink all the water.  Then, pee in the water bottle, relieving my bladder, and, finally, make some money in the process by selling it as lemonade to some unsuspecting runner.  These suburban kids may not know how to turn a buck but I am a survivor. 

So, why did I buy a waist belt that was too small?  It was on sale at Target.  Duh! 

Speaking of Tar-zhay — and I always seem to be speaking of Tar-zhay — as Mom and I were walking to our car at the very back of the parking lot earlier this week, I made the non-judgmental observation that the people here seem very, very out of shape.  Especially compared to the people in NYC.  I think it’s because the people in NYC walk so freakin’ much.  And then there’s running after cabs, so even if you do end up taking the cab across town, the brief sprint to beat out the guy on crutches trying to carry two bags of groceries counts as both cardio and strength training — and you get some resistance training in there too if you have to hold the door closed as he tries to yank it open.  No, this did not happen to me.  I just saw it happen to others a few times.  Really!  And if it had been me, I would’ve pushed the guy down on the way to the cab so that there was no chance he could come after me.  And that counts as contact sport training, too.  Anyhoodle....

You know, one of the most humbling and encouraging lessons that I’ve learned is that fat does not mean unfit.  I have about @&! pounds to lose and when I started running I thought that people would wonder what this chunky monkey was doing taking up space when there were real runners trying to get by.  And you know what?  Some of those real runners were much, much bigger than I was and they blasted by me on the running trail without even breaking a sweat or breathing hard. It boosted my confidence in a fucked up kind of way because, as they zoomed by me, I wondered what those chunky monkeys were doing taking up space when there were real chunky monkey’s trying to get by.  Even though I haven’t lost much weight, I feel so much stronger and more confident.  In fact, I am confident that, if ever faced with a cab duel with a guy on crutches carrying two bags of groceries, I could not only beat him to the cab but I could hold the door closed without so much as breaking a nail in the process. 

The second most important thing I’ve learned from running is how to spit.  Oh, don’t twist your face up like that.  Before I began running I would throw an undisguised look of disgust at runners who spit.  I usually watched the Ironman from the comfort of my couch, but occasionally cheered marathoners as they passed by during an early happy hour.  As I double-fisted a high quality brew like Natural Light while maintaining my balance on a bar stool barely bigger than one ass cheek, I was certain that, while I may not have been fit, at least I had class. Now, however, I understand.  No matter how dry your throat feels or how dehydration has caused your eyeballs to shrivel up like raisins and rattle in their sockets, there will be a nasty loogie waiting at the back of your throat.  It must be expelled.  Yes, that’s gross, but so is swallowing the loogie.  Do you want to swallow the loogie?  No, I didn’t think so.  I’ve learned two cardinal rules of spitting: 

1) Do not spit directly in front of you, especially if it is windy.  It is very important that you turn your head to your side. 
2) Make sure there is no one running by your side.

This wasn’t such a concern here in the ‘burbs but it’s something to keep in mind if you ever run the loop around the Reservoir in Central Park.  Helpful tips, I gots ‘em.

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