Why I run.

When people ask me why I run I generally give the same answer all the time. It's always something along the lines of "it's the healthiest way to simultaneously calm and satiate my inner control freak." On the one hand, it's something I'm in complete control of. When I go, how far I go, where I go... it's complete freedom to obsess about something that doesn't affect anyone else. On the other hand? Running is something I have absolutely no control over. I can't completely control how I feel when I run or how fast I run. I can merely try my best to prepare myself for the situation, but how it turns out is completely out of my control. In the end, every run is a crap shoot.

But, if I'm being honest... aside from all that psychological mumbo jumbo, there's really only one reason that I truly hit the pavement as many days as I do. And that reason is very simple... it's so I can indulge. In bad food and more importantly, booze. How many times have I exclaimed... "I'm carbo-loading, bitches" while I raise a beer bottle in the air? Yeah, too, too many.

Sure, running doesn't erase all the calories from alcohol or from my favorite meal of nachos. But... it does make me feel a little less guilty about stuffing my face when I've had a good run earlier in the day. And a lot of times, I crawl out of bed early in the morning only because I remember the enormous whole pizza (or the enormous whole bottle of wine or Woody*) I inhaled the previous night. Gotta do some damage control, right?

This is the sole reason that I found myself running in the rain on Sunday morning along one of the hilliest freaking routes around... Yes, folks. I got up at 7am and headed to Loveless Cafe to meet up with a group of crazy ass runners to run 10 miles on the Natchez Trace. You see, this is called the biscuit run. You run 10 miles of rolling, climbing, heart-pumping, awful, awful hills and then you go into the Loveless Cafe and gorge yourself on the most wonderful breakfast food that there is... Biscuits.

I got to the meeting place a little early and after a little socializing, we all took off to get the run over with. And literally about 2 minutes into the run, the sky opened up and it started raining on us. The rain continued for the entire rest of the run. Despite the weather, initially, I was feeling really good... I was even like... "why is it that we only do this once a year? we should have a fall biscuit run!" and then by the time I had hit 7 miles or so, I was thinking to myself, "oh my freaking god, if I stop right now and sit on the side of the road in the rain, will one of the fast people drive back to get me?" I mean seriously. After running 20 miles the day before... those hellacious, hilly 10 miles sucked.

But in the back of my mind the entire time... were those biscuits. They became like some sort of runners porn. I imagined one steaming hot with honey dripping all over it. Another one slathered in salty butter. I came up with every salacious biscuit scenario I could and finally... finally the run was over.

We all went inside to gobble up the biscuits and the other breakfast grub and as I ate my one biscuit (ugh. stupid diet) with honey drizzled all over it, I thought to myself... this makes the shitty, shitty run all worth it.

*Woody... Yes, it's finally the time in our relationship to start using an affectionate nickname for my beloved boyfriend, Woodford Reserve.