Recipe for a Disaster Run

The recipe for a disastrous run is very simple. First, you need the following ingredients: shorts with a liner that chafes, unpreparedness, a large carb filled lunch, knee pain, and heat. Take these ingredients and follow these easy instructions:

1. Don't prepare for your run. These are instructions for a disastrous afternoon/evening run. So, when you're deciding what to eat for lunch choose something high in carbs and hard for your body to digest in a short period of time. Go get a big plate of spaghetti with meat sauce. That's what I did and it worked out just terribly.
2. If it all possible wear a pair of shorts that you know from experience will chafe the crap out of you on a long run. When things start to fall apart you want that little bit extra pain in your ass, literally, to drag you down just a little bit further emotionally.
   
3. Don't take water with you. Hey, it's only 10 miles and 90 degrees F. What could possibly go wrong? Forget about the fact that you haven't run in that kind of heat this year. Your tough.
4. Now that you have no water, a pair of shorts that chafe, and a tummy full of half digested lunch. Run very fast. Run faster than you think you should. Take this long run, and treat it like a goal pace run. In fact if there are runners ahead of you try to chase them down.
   
5. When the pain starts, in this case a knee pain you're very familiar with, don't stop running. Try to push through the pain. Even though you've experienced this pain before, and know for a fact that it isn't something that will go away, this time will be different.
   

I like to mix myself up a good disaster run about once or twice a year. There are many different recipes and variations on recipes to create a good disaster run. For instance, last year I cooked up a devilishly delicious disaster run, by substituting a big carb filled lunch with the exhaustion that comes from being up and working for almost 24 hours. Two distinctly different kinds of pain, but both equally suckilicious.

The Day after:

It's a day after that lovely run. I'm feeling a little better today. The knee is still bothering me a little bit, but after a good ice session last night it isn't bothering me enough to keep me from going on a bike ride. Geesh, I'll never learn. The run was not really a total disaster. Every bad run is a learning experience. The biggest thing I probably learned this time was about preparation. Had I put a little bit of thought into getting ready many of my problems could have been avoided. It's not looking like such a big disaster in hind sight, that is, unless my knee continues to be a problem and screws up my race season. If that happens I will look back on this run all summer with more than a little anger. For now though, I'm going to keep an optimistic view. Just remember, a bad run is better than no run at all...most of the time.