Rock Out

Do you ever get a rock stuck in your shoe when you’re running? This happened to me last night and it sucked. Now I don’t want to make it seem like I’ve never had a rock in my shoe whilst running, it has just never been quite as painful as it was last night and honestly it has never occurred to me that I could squeeze a blog post out of it. Plus this wasn’t just any old rock that I got stuck in my shoe. It was an angry devil-rock, intent on destroying my sole *rimshot!* and I suspect it was made out of kryptonite because what kind of pansy complains about a regular rock in his shoe? Not this pansy guy, that’s for sure.

It happened early in the run, within the first mile, but I was already starting to get into my groove like Madonna, and I didn’t want to stop, untie my shoes and go through that whole rigmarole just for a teeny, tiny, little rock. I was in the zone and everyone knows that you don’t ever stop when you’re in the zone so I kept on running. Usually when a rock gets into my shoe if I keep running it moves around and nestles in to one of the nooks or crannies in my shoes and I don’t feel it anymore. Despite me routinely shaking my foot mid-stride to move the rock, it never moved. Instead the devil-rock planted itself squarely beneath the ball of my left foot and it stayed there for the remainder of my run. Again, I could have stopped and removed the rock, but I really, really didn’t want to because I didn’t want to mess up my splits and it really didn’t hurt that bad.

When I got home I took off my shoe and held it up vertically so the rock dropped into the heel section. My eyes narrowed to a glare and I found myself mouthing ‘well hello there you little sonofa...’ and then I realized that my neighbors were watching me and probably wondering why I was so mad at my shoe. I dumped the rock onto the driveway and noticed that it wasn’t nearly as big as it felt inside my shoe. Not so tough now are you?

This morning I have a nice big blister from that stupid little rock. My advice to you, fair reader, is that next time you get a rock in your shoe you should stop running, remove your shoe and evacuate the superfluous rocks. You heard it here first; don’t continue to run with rocks in your shoe. Additional advice columns that you can expect to see in the near future at Half-Fast include:

• How Hydrating Could Benefit You
• Don’t Eat Mexican Food Before a Run (Note: I did this last night too, but that’s a story for another post.)
• Peeing Into the Wind, Why It’s a Bad Idea
• Running Up Hills, It’s Harder!
• Off Topic: Buy Low, Sell High - A Revolutionary New Way to Invest.
• The Sky, It’s Blue!

If you missed it yesterday (what, you don’t come here every day?), please see the post below in which I do penance for all the mean-spiritedness that pollutes this blog on a daily basis and donate to a good cause if you feel inclined. Don’t make me break out the ol’ Jedi Mind Trick.

Could’ve done without that

It’s been a long week. My reader and my inbox consist of a lot more bolded entries than un-bolded ones, something that will be remedied soon by the ‘mark all items as read’ button. What a fantastic invention that was. My work days have been consumed by meetings and presentations to people who lack the capacity to think logically and my nights have been filling up with obligations too. What I’ve been needing is a long, hard run followed by a good night’s sleep. What I’ve had to settle for is short, quick one milers followed by equally short nights, so when the opportunity arose to get in a four mile run I was pretty excited. For the record I don’t consider a four mile run to be a ‘long, hard run’ but it was something other than the worthless one milers that I’d been squeezing in to my hectic schedule (which I pronounce shed-yool because it makes me sound better than you).

Just as I was about to head out the door, a light rain started to fall. I love running in the rain. More specifically, I love being seen running in the rain by my neighbors and motorists because it probably makes them think I’m hardcore... or an idiot, I’m not sure which. Actually, there’s a pretty good chance that they were thinking the latter because I was listening to The Moth Podcast, recommended to me by Amy Lawson, which unlike our podcast is laugh out loud funny. So there I was barreling down the street, in the rain, unable to suppress my laughter. I’m sure I made some motorist’s day. Things were looking up until I came across this:

Walk closed? This cannot be! This is my favorite trail to run on and now it’s closed, just like that. I’m pretty sure I didn’t authorize this! [Edit: Candis tells me I did authorize it because we got to vote on the new public swimming facility/rec center that is being built in the field to the right of the path, which is why the path is closed. Whatever. That vote is more suspect that the Iranian election.] How come no one consulted me before closing the path? That was my happy place! You can’t just go around closing people’s happy places without consulting them!

I was in shock. Judging by the construction going on to the right of the path, my running trail (yes, MY running trail) is going to be closed for quite some time. I just stood there in front of the walk closed sign, completely gob-smacked. I contemplated climbing the fence and going on about my business but decided that the last thing I needed was to rack myself on the top of the fence.

I eventually managed to pick up the broken pieces of my run and move on. I found a way around the construction and picked up the trail further down but this is going to be a major inconvenience and a source of much future whining. I just hope you guys are strong enough to put up with it.