Two of my closest bros have suddenly gone crazy about running, and their passion for the sadomasochistic has rubbed off onto me.
I used to be one of those people who thought all runners were crazy. Like running is one very painful sport to engage in. It is monotonous, and it is tiring. Very tiring. And it is never any fun running, no matter how fit you are. But with one bro going for the Ironman and the other having signed up for the Sundown marathon, I was inspired into doing the simplest evil of all. Trying to get gold for my IPPT 2.4km run. Will consider the Sundown if I do make it.
You can be in the best shape of your life, but 30 minutes into a high intensity run you will still be screaming at that voice in your head, while it screams equally intensely back at you begging you to stop. At that point, it is really just you, versus all the random parts of your body that are on fire. Like your knees. Your calves. Your lungs. And other random muscles that hurt that you didn't even know you had. Like did you even know your butt cheeks can cramp? I didn't know that either.
While running, I often see all sorts of people running along with me. And when we pass each other, we give each other this knowing look, like "I bet I've run more than you." We then proceed to try and piss the shit out of each other by engaging in a pyrrhic competition where the loser feels like shit and the winner feels even more shit, only because he's trying to outrun the loser so that he looks like the better runner.
Yes, because when I run there will inevitably be this idiot who will try to run faster than me, and I will not let him do it just because I don't want to see that stupid smirk on his face when he passes me.
So the next 30 minutes will be a marathon of pain until he decides that enough is enough and gives up. I will then accelerate and watch his face contort with anguish, even as my insides burn up. Yes, you need a certain kind of crazy to be a runner.
But the worst part of a run is always 20 minutes after it. After a long hard run, the next hardest thing to face is the hunger pangs that come after. Refusing to cave in, I spent the next one hour thinking of eating Macs every 3 seconds. I could smell it, touch it, taste it, but I could not eat it. That's twenty times a minute. Or 1200 times in an hour. It was so bad it actually came in pulses, like Macs, pause, Macs, pause, Macs. It was just like this article I read in Men's Health, where this model said "To get that perfect body you want, it means you really have to know hunger."
Yah, no shit. 1200 times in an hour. Even my best friends don't call that often. I'd kill them.