Nature calls

I love being a girl, always have. Even when I was climbing willow trees, or was knee-high in mud catching tadpoles and froggies, or watching hours of hockey with my brothers, I have always loved being a girl. I love being able to wear pretty skirts, and get sparkly presents, and fancy up my hair and go all googly eyed over the likes of Chris Cornell and Johnny Depp. But today, one of those oh-so-rare days, I actually wished that I was a boy.

Boys can always find a makeshift toilet; girls, not so much!

My bladder was raging a major war on me this morning. I went to the washroom twice before leaving the Running Room, which really isn’t all that out of the ordinary, given my nervous bladder. I go to the washroom at least once, sometimes twice, before a movie starts, I cannot talk after going to the washroom before bed, because otherwise I’ll have to go again, and yes, I go to the washroom numerous times before leaving for a run – all because I fear that I’ll have to go the washroom halfway through, and who wants to interrupt a movie with a washroom break, or be startled awake with a full bladder, or be stranded in the middle of a run with a washroom nowhere to be found? Not me!

About 10 minutes into the run I was feeling the familiar pressure of a bladder needing to be emptied, but I thought maybe it was just in my head. I tried to ignore it, but my bladder knew this route, knew that there was a washroom coming up – it was not about to let up on the pressure. So, off to the loo I went.

Once I was back on the road again and feeling refreshed with relief, I figured I was good to go. But not even 10 minutes went by before I started feeling the bladder pressures again. I tried not to think about it, I tried chatting up my running gals, I tried to just cringe and bare it, but none of it worked. At one point, I thought I was even gonna have to cross one of my legs over the other to help squeeze it in!

I couldn’t bare it any longer, I started looking around for a spot to squat. That’s right, desperate times call for desperate measures and my goodness this girly girl was in some desperate need for a pee. But, even though we were running in a pretty rural area, everywhere I looked was either crops or residential property, which I’m guessing the owners wouldn’t have been too pleased to look out their window and find a girl squatting for a pee. Finally, I saw a path and figured okay, I can make that work. I told the girls I’d catch up to them, and I ran down it trying to find a nice well-hidden spot. When I thought I had found one, I crouched down, but just at that moment, an SUV passed by, and I could so clearly see into its window and was pretty sure had the driver looked my way, he too probably would have had a clear view. Nope, not a good spot. Back to the girls I went.

I was pretty close to peeing my pants when finally one of the gals spotted a shack, and told me to go pee behind there. At first I was skeptical, what if someone lives in that shack? What if someone sees me? What if there’s an invisible electric fence that shocks the hell out of me? But I was practically doing the pee dance by now; the what ifs were quickly ruled out.

I'm the kind of girl who likes a real washroom, one with toilet paper, one with soap and water, one that flushes – not nature's rustic washroom!

I climbed through the waist-high grass, behind the abandoned shack, and squatted down. The sounds of the rustling grass had me envisioning a snake slithering up behind me, or an opossum hissing its ugly face at me, or a coyote taking a chunk out of me. I had fears of peeing all over my shorts, and of stinging nettles attacking my nether regions, and of vehicles driving by and spotting me. I could not pee fast enough!

What the heck was up with my bladder? My blood sugars weren’t high. I didn’t drink mondo amounts of water. I wasn’t listening to sounds of trickling water in my ipod. I’m warning you now bladder, don’t mess with me next week!

TODAY’S RUN:

  • 8:15 a.m. BG before: 4.6 (had gone down from 6.7 in a matter of a half an hour and after eating a granola bar and downing a juice box … had 3 DEX tablets, and hoped for the best) (temp. basal rate -50 per cent)
  • Distance: 13.17 long slow distance (10:1)
  • Time: 1:32:47
  • 45 minutes in: GU gel
  • Average Pace: 7:02
  • 10:30 a.m. BG after: 6.7

3 thoughts on “Nature calls”

  1. robert Freeman

    “girly-girl in some desperate need for a pee”
    You have a way with words, and even bathroom humour – “a squat among the stinging nettles” – takes on an air of class 🙂

  2. Pingback: Sleepless in ‘Le Tour’ town «

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