7 THINGS RUNNERS DO ON LONG RUNS (BUT PROBABLY WON’T ADMIT)

Runners are…a unique breed. We usu­ally do more than just run for fun to make our friends and fam­ily won­der about us. That’s not new news to any­one who knows us but if you can believe it, we get even weirder. We fre­quently do things on our runs—especially longer runs—that we’re not nec­es­sar­ily proud of, things we usu­ally don’t share, such as…

RACE THE SPEED TRAP
You know those elec­tronic signs on the side of the road that tell cars how fast they’re going and flash red when you’re over the speed limit? They will also some­times pick up a run­ner pass­ing by and let the world know you’re run­ning 6 or 7 mph. Some runners—not me, of course—have spot­ted a speed trap com­ing up and floored it to full-on sprint just to see if they could break into the dou­ble dig­its. It’s a lot harder than it sounds.

APPLY BODY GLIDE BETWEEN THE CHEEKS (and I’m not talk­ing about eat­ing it).
Sit on that for a minute (yes, pun totally intended) and you’ll get what I’m sug­gest­ing here. It only takes one chapped butt before you never skip this step again.

TALK TO THEMSELVES—OUT LOUD
Even though it actu­ally takes more effort to mum­ble your thoughts aloud, we still find our­selves doing it. Maybe because run­ning is our ‘safe place’ and some thoughts sim­ply need to be said out loud before they can be dis­carded, but it still must be acknowl­edged that most of us have been caught doing this by some­one pass­ing, and it sure hasn’t helped the idea that run­ners are nuts.

KID THEM­SELVES
Haven’t you ever imag­ined that a pass­ing car thinks you look badass or per­haps won­ders if you are spon­sored? After all, you’re run­ning so fast and have a spiffy match­ing out­fit on!

SPLURGE PLAN­NING
I don’t know a run­ner who hasn’t spent a dis­pro­por­tion­ate amount of the run deter­min­ing all that they will eat—guilt free!—upon fin­ish­ing the run. The only other time I’ve done this aside from run­ning was child­birth, because when else are you guar­an­teed to burn more than 1,000 calo­ries in one activ­ity? And, this may sur­prise you, but I’d rather do the long run for my ice cream sun­dae, thank you very much.

PLAY HOUSE
I can’t be the only one who pre­tend house shops while run­ning through neigh­bor­hoods, imag­in­ing what it would be like to own that house—you know, the water­front man­sion with a seven car garage, or the gor­geous cedar log cabin in the mid­dle of nowhere on one of your trail runs—and be able to stop your run at that dri­ve­way, call­ing it home. Besides, if you hap­pened to live at what­ever house you’re in front of, you’d be done sooner. Bonus points for convenience.

BATH­ROOM MAP­PING
You never know when you’re going to have to go, and hold­ing it in is never a good idea on a long run. There­fore, most of us start bath­room map­ping with­out even real­iz­ing it; this con­sists of not­ing every­where on a run we see that would work as a poten­tial bath­room (con­struc­tion sites, gas sta­tions, three trees clumped together, large bushes, alleys…we’re not exactly picky.) for future runs on the same course.

This is just a pre­lim­i­nary list, of course. Although many run­ners may be able to relate to things listed here, they likely have a few of their own secrets they don’t typ­i­cally share. If you’re feel­ing brave, feel free to share below!

By Audra Run­dle
http://www.theclymb.com/stories/out-there/7-things-runners-long-runs-probably-wont-admit/