Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Lesson Learned: Always Look First


It's snowy outside. We probably have about 3" of accumulation. And for Wisconsin, Colorado, or Boston, that's nothing. But here it is a big deal.

So it was a big deal when I decided that running 10 miles on a treadmill simply would not do and headed to Pawnee Prairie Park for a trail run.

It was very cold, but not uncomfortably so (at least while running). Actually, the only real discomfort I experienced was an unbearable need to pee.

In the summer, that wouldn't be such a big deal. Pawnee Prairie is equipped with some adequate (if not exactly nice) facilities. But those facilities are closed during the winter, it seems.

You see where I'm going with this, right?

I was only a couple miles into my run when I decided that I simply could not hold it. Fine. Okay. It's cold, but it's not unbearable, and there's no one around anyway. The only real issue is properly positioning myself so that I don't end up misfiring and dampening any of the three pairs of pants I'm wearing. To that point and purpose, I used a nearby tree for, um, balance.

Got things done without incident, stood up, and started readjusting the layers of clothing. At that point, I felt something poking me. I looked at my gloves and saw that they were polka-dotted with about a dozen little burrs. And as I continued to re-position various articles of clothing, I soon realized that I had gotten these damn little sand burrs everywhere.

No, really. Everywhere.

So the lesson for the day is this: ALWAYS look first.

3 comments:

  1. yea, i always pee in the trails, even in the summer! i never use the bathrooms!! those burrs are a pain to get out. i have gotten them in my gloves and clothes too but not my privates, lol.

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  2. Hahaha! Nice! I had a friend in college who got poison oak in exactly the same way. She was from Michigan (no poison oak there), and so she thought that she had an STD. So yeah, it could be worse!

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  3. Oooh, no fun. I had the exact same experience on the side of the road in Italy this fall. The little buggers stuck everywhere to my lycra and my family laughed themselves silly while I removed the hundred or so from my shorts.

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