Cool Runnings. No, HOT Runnings
Yesterday was 80 degrees. And I went running in it. Is there no end to my stupidity?
Here's the deal. Minnesotans get downright giddy with the arrival of spring. For about a month or so, we don't function as normal people. We get unusually excited when we step outside in the morning and are greeted with warm sunshine and chirping birds. It's not our fault. After months of enduring biting cold and an eerie, omnipresent silence, we just kind of lose our minds.
Therefore, when I got home from work yesterday, with the sun shining, and the birds chirping, I felt obligated to go for a run. Now the last time I ran was Thursday of last week, when the temperature was a more moderate 60 degrees or so. It should be noted that 80 degrees is considerably warmer than that. Granted, I've run in even warmer temps, but making the jump from 60 to 80 degrees was something I wasn't prepared for. You should work your way slowly into such things, rather than foolishly galloping five miles in baking heat.
I'm building up to something that is actually anticlimactic. Yes, I went for an ill-advised five mile trek in unseasonably high temps, but I didn't die or anything. Mostly, I did a lot of sweating. Tons of sweating. Ridiculous amounts of sweating. Sure, the girls in my hapkido class call me "Puddles" for a reason, but I have NEVER had that much sweat pour from my pores before. It was INSANE. And, being that it's early in the season, none of the water fountains in the city have been turned on yet, and I wasn't carrying any money with me to buy water, so I just kind of had to suffer my way back home. Oh, man, did I want water.
And let me just state for the record that, when you're really thirsty, and I mean Sahara throat thirsty, there's nothing worse than water that's too damned cold. I grabbed my water bottle from the fridge and started drinking deeply, only to have the ice cold water actually hurt on its way down. My whole head hurt, a pounding, deperate hurt that originated deep within my skull. But, I couldn't stop drinking water, because my body simply demanded it. So, it was an Id battle between my head and body, and my body kept winning, only because my body is so much bigger than my head.
ME: Oh my God my head hurts! *glug, glug, glug* I can't stand the pain! *glug, glug, glug* I think my skull is about to crack open! *glug, glug, glug*
Eventually, I was able to re-hydrate myself, at the expense of roughly eight million brain cells, and I just kind of balled myself up on my bed, whimpering ever so slightly as the throbbing pain in my head subsided.
On a totally unrelated note, a friend of mine, Lisa (who introduced Melissa and me, so I'm obligated to like her despite strong reasons not to), is going to Maui in June, and she's preparing for the trip by tanning. I don't understand the whole tanning thing. Why do people feel they have to tan? I don't think tanned people look any better or worse than non-tanned people. In fact, in Minnesota, if you're tanned, I usually just assume you're a materialistic, superficial fuckwad with nothing better to do than obsess about your looks. Not that Lisa is a materialistic fuckwad or anything, but tanning just strikes me as a total and complete waste of time and money.
Of course, I'm naturally a smoking hot specimen of male hunkiness, so my opinion on tanning may be tainted by that. But, anyway. I've been to Maui many times, including just last Christmas, and I'm here to tell you that people on Maui don't give a flying fuck whether you're tan or not, and they don't care if you're 8,000 pounds or 80 pounds. Mostly, the people on Maui are interested in soaking up as much paradise as they can. What fun is a vacation if you're worrying about how you look? Especially when, by the very act of worrying how you look, you end up looking materialistic and superficial, if not downright silly. Just my opinion.
Posted by Ryan at April 15, 2003 12:15 PM
Stumble It!
