On the Road Again

By Emilie L. David, 7 January 2013

So….I took a bit of a hiatus.  From writing.  From running.  From writing about running.  I made it to my big race of the 2012 season – my first Olympic Triathlon, and then I took a nice big vacation from training and thinking about training.  I ate amazing things I’d never eaten before.  I drank a lot of wine.    I went to the ballet.  I jogged occasionally, in a not very serious manner.  I think that I barely ever stopped smiling.  It was a good break.  A much needed break.  But come December, the restlessness began, and the lure of races and the camaraderie of runners beckoned.  Oh yeah, and the return of my doughy two-pack became impossible to ignore anymore.  Which is why I find myself with 2 half marathons and a 10 miler on my Spring calendar and listening to the rallying calls of my favorite coach and huffing and puffing and cursing and wincing and weighing the wisdom of my decision to start it back up again.

10 Things I Did Not Miss About Training

1. My toenails. As in, I was not missing them because I had all 10 of them! For 3 glorious months!

2. Beating the sun up on Saturday mornings.

3. The consumption of goos and gels. Do you know what’s so much better than fortified goop? Monkfish. Scallops on the grill with garlic and soy sauce. Salmon roe with quail eggs. And bourbon. Oh, the bourbon… (Sorry, I got lost in thought for a bit there).

4. A car interior that smells like a locker room.

5. Hours spent where the only thing I say to another human is “On your left.”

6. That salted-frozen-raisin feeling one gets after a long run, when you limp back to your car, crusty with sweat and shivering from being trapped in your soaked running girl apparatus.

7. So. Much. Laundry.

8. The cleaning of the water bottles.

9. Eating while running. I always end up getting more gel on my hands than in my person and then I spend the whole run freaking out about how sticky my hands are. Since I tend to favor chocolate flavors, it is not unusual for me to get back to the car afterwards and find I am sporting a nice gel and salt moustache. Super sexy. And I can’t figure out bars. How do I breathe if I have to chew something? I don’t want to go out choking to death on a wad of Powerbar nougat. Embarrassing.

10. Trying to discretely roll the knots out of my tendons, haunches, arches, and other aching bits and pieces with a tennis ball at the office without yelling out things like “Dear god – that’s the spot!!!”