A final word on running…no, I didn’t run the half marathon in the Ottawa Race Weekend. I got there, looked around, and realized there were ten thousand other people there to run it for me. I got there early, and started warming up. I was supposed to run with promo-guy Esther, her twin sister Judy, and two of their friends. All four girls are tiny, and the place had ten thousand runners warming up. The chances I would find any of them was almost zero. Miraculously, however, I DID run into Esther and Judy a little bit before the race. I guess it was a little easier to spot blonde twins than an individual person.
As we stretched and warmed up, I looked around and realized that I was, by far, still the fattest person there. Now, I have lost a lot of weight in the past year. And I was able to run this full 21-km (13 mile) half marathon two weeks earlier. Bushtukah gave me some great shoes, which fixed my knee problems. But having never actually run the full 13 miles (my training really topped out at 6 miles a day, and no further), I wasn’t prepared for the painful pounding my ample frame would cause upon my hips. And with about 3 miles to go, I was in agony. I finished, but I never took another step running between that day and the race itself. In fact, I barely took a step walking either.
Thanks to the junk-waxing I recently received, courtesy of the twisted minds of Doc and Woody and the soft hands of Brittany the aesthetician, I was sticking in places that might prove detrimental to my race. So I headed back to my car to get the little anti-glide stick I got from Bushtukah. Or maybe it’s a pro-glide stick. Whatever. It keeps my stuff from sticking to my other stuff while I run. I headed across the street with about ten minutes to spare, only to look down the street. I saw thousands of people in the starting gate, waiting to get going. The faster people go first, the slower people (me) go last. I had a little time, but I had to hurry.
So I ran to my car. Which was in the World Exchange Plaza, two blocks away. (By the way, the WEP has free parking all day every weekend – nice, eh?) By the time I got there, I was once again in agony. My hips don’t lie. And they said “you’re not running”. I reasoned that, as the fattest guy there, I was going to take up the most space on the starting line, and space was tight. I would be doing the rest of the runners a huge favour by skipping the race. So I got in my car and went home.
That’s it. I will continue to excercise. I will play sports. This coming weekend I will be in a volleyball tournament and a softball tournament and I will do the rowing machine and lift weights and swim and so forth. But running is OVER. I hate it. I was running six miles a day, and I hated every step, every minute, every breath. That “runners high” thing people talk about? Not so. I suspect that “runners high” is different for each person. I think some are susceptible to it, others are not. Like a peanut allergy, or the very few people who aren’t bothered by pepper spray. So I quit. I would quit eating peanuts if I had an allergy. I would start more riots if I wasn’t fazed by pepper spray. And without the “runners high”, there is no reason for me to run, ever again. So long, hip pain and anger!