I had only done the Cougar Mountain trail workout once before and I was a lot chunkier and slower, so I was looking forward to attacking the trails in my leaner, meaner state. The last time I did the run, I wheezed my way up the hills feeling miserable and bloated.

Lugging my chub across five miles of trail in 2010

I don’t have a picture of myself from Saturday’s workout, but I estimate that I’m about 14 lbs lighter and considerably faster than I was in the above chunkeriffic photo. Hooray for eating like a normal human being for a change!

We waited for our squadron of teammates to arrive, and I figured I’d have plenty of peeps to run with. My hopes were dashed when five people showed up:

1. Tom, who just did Ironman Canada and wouldn’t be taking the workout seriously
2. Amanda, who also just did Ironman Canada and also gave zero shits about the workout
3. Brent, who has qualified for the Boston Marathon
4. Coach Bridget, who is much faster than me
5. Coach Kim, who is much much much faster than me

Awesome, so that leaves the fast group (Kim, Bridget, Jason, Brent), the “We just did an Ironman so fuck you” group (Tom, Amanda), and me, the cheese, left to run by herself yet again. I’ve either got to get a hell of a lot faster or just give up and sandbag it from now on, because this middle of the pack nonsense is getting pretty lonely.

Before we got started, Bridget inexplicably thought it would be a good idea to attach her $400 Garmin watch to her dog’s collar to see how fast and far her pooch would travel during the workout. We didn’t think it was the smartest idea considering Zoe started chasing the watch’s reflection across the parking lot as soon as Bridget strapped it onto her collar, but Bridget’s gonna do what Bridget’s gonna do. And thus we took off.

Bridget and her dog (not at Cougar Mountain; I just stole this pic from her Facebook page)

Almost immediately we settled into Fast Group, the Mediocre Athlete Team of One, and the Ironcouple. Zoe shot off like a rocket, weaving in and out of the woods and crashing through trees like a sasquatch on angel dust. We had been running for less than ten minutes when the dog returned to Bridget, panting happily. I heard a loud “MOTHER FUCKER” and immediately knew the cause of said expletive. By the time I caught up to Fast Group, the look on Coach B’s face pretty obviously identified the problem: Zoe lost the Garmin watch. Surprise!

Bridget left Fast Group to try and find her watch, so they took off without her while I chased them to no avail. Pretty soon they dropped me like I was a holiday flavored gel (seriously, mint chocolate? Eggnog? Nobody likes that shit) and I found myself alone on the trail. My run felt really good and I stayed steady and strong, albeit ridiculously sweaty as I trudged through the thick, humid air. At one point a guy and his buddy passed me twice going the same direction, causing me to double-take and say, “Didn’t I just see you guys?” the second time we crossed paths. Either there was a glitch in the Matrix or those dudes were lost.

The run went tons better than the first time I did the trail workout, which was a nice indication of how much my running has improved and how less chunky I was. Plus, I only tripped and nearly killed myself twice, which is astoundingly good considering how clumsy I am. Unfortunately, I misread the workout directions and stayed on a path for one mile instead of point one miles, so I accidentally missed a turn and ended up cutting the workout a little short. I didn’t realize my mistake until I reached the parking lot from the opposite side of the park. I made my way over to the trail entrance and waited for Fast Group to emerge while steam rose from my disgustingly sweaty body.

Eventually I heard the group chatting, so I waited for them to get to the parking lot. Brent was the only one who emerged — apparently he was heading home but the rest of them went to go look for Bridget’s watch. I chased after the remaining three and caught up to Bridget and Kim, who were trudging through the woods, their eyes glued to the forest floor. Bridget told me that Jason had taken off to try and look for me. Since there was no way I’d catch up to him considering he already had a sizable head start on me, I figured I’d stay behind and try and look for Bridget’s watch. The ensuing conversation went as follows:

Me: “The watch should be around here, yeah?”

Bridget: “Yeah, but she ran through so many bushes and trees that it could be buried or hidden somewhere.”

Me: “Well I can’t imagine it’d be that hard to spot since it’s bright orange…” I looked down at my feet to begin my search and there it was, covered and dirt and literally right in front of me. “Oh, it’s right here!”

Bridget: “SHUT UPPPP!!!”

She scampered over to me and gave me a huge hug despite my protests to not touch me because I was all sweaty and nasty. I am still astounded that I managed to find that thing in an instant after they had been looking for a while. Bridget, this better make us even for me not going to your barbecue!

We made our way back to the parking lot. Kim pointed out some brown stuff that was stuck to Zoe’s side and asked Bridget how her dog had gotten so dirty. Bridget responded with “Oh, it’s just bark and mud,” then wiped it off, sniffed her hand, and exclaimed, “Ewwww no it’s not that’s POOP!” So Bridget’s trail workout concluded with her cleaning off a poo-covered Zoe and thinking that this was probably the worst trail run ever while her dog looked happy and excited and was probably thinking that this was the best trail run ever (“I got to run through the woods! I rolled around in poop!”). It’s all about perspective.

Eventually Jason and Ironcouple made their way back to the parking lot, and we were all rewarded for a workout well done with cookies. Since I’m still working on Operation Abs, I only took one cookie but told myself it was an “I found the Garmin” cookie and thus well-earned. All in all it was a fun way to start my Saturday and I pretended to be the hero in yet another dog-related incident. Maybe next week I’ll end up saving a drowning dog from Lake Washington who happens to have a missing family heirloom attached to its collar or something. The excitement never stops in Mediocre Athleteland!

Jason had a hill repeat run too, only he had eight climbs because he’s more beastly than I am. We both started at the Volunteer Park Cafe on Galer in Capitol Hill and would run from there up a steep 200 meters until we reached the entrance to Volunteer Park, then we’d turn around and jog back down. The hill is somewhat crappy — it’s a steady climb for most of the way up and then has a nice and shitty steep finish. My hamstrings actually felt less sore when I climbed so the repeats actually weren’t too bad.

I was running up the sidewalk during my last repeat when I glanced across the street and noticed two absolutely stupid looking Boston terriers running up the sidewalk too. A mild wave of annoyance crossed through me as I thought the owner was probably behind the dogs and had let them off the leash like a douchebag. When I got to the top of the hill, I turned around to descend but saw nobody in sight.

At this point the dogs had reached the top of the hill and were darting all over the place in a spazzy little frenzy. Some random dude who looked like Wilford Brimley emerged from the park, saw the terriers, and exclaimed, “Well where did you two come from?” He fended off oncoming cars while trying to shoo the dogs out of harm’s way. The terriers turned around and started shooting back down the hill.

By now Jason had realized that I was more interested in the dogs than in doing my cooldown, so he looked on in annoyance while I tried to flag the dogs down. He and I are mostly compatible with a few exceptions:

1. He hates when I make hard-boiled eggs or eat tuna fish because they’re stinky
2. I get annoyed every time he washes his face and flings water all over the bathroom mirror
3. He’s not a big “pet person”

Regarding #3, Jason and I are like the Sharks and the Jets from West Side Story. I grew up with a plethora of animals — since childhood, I’ve had a pet hamster, a bunny, a guinea pig, a cat (pre-allergies), and a wild assortment of dogs I’ve loved (my brother’s beagle) and loathed (two stupid, high maintenance chows). He, on the other hand, grew up in a pet-free home, so he’s never had much interaction with furry critters and is therefore pretty “meh” about them in general. I want to get a dog but he’s very eye-rolling about the matter. Since we’re at a standstill regarding bringing a dog into the household, I have to get my doggy fix with random pooches I come across.

Okay, back to the Boston terriers. The big one shot down the hill on the other side of the street but the little one started to run towards me. I clapped my hands and coaxed it over, then spent a few minutes chasing it around until I managed to half-tackle the damn thing (I should have logged the extra time and distance with the rest of my workout — “Chased dog: 3 minutes, zone 2 heart rate”). Once I scooped it up, I noticed that it had hilariously wonky eyes (one brown and one a milky blue that stared off into a different direction), a pink collar with no tags (ugh, wonderful, no identifying information), and a bunch of hard nipples poking out of its chest. Based on the color of the collar and the bundle of nips digging into my hand, I deduced that this hyper little bugger was female (either that or a very excitable male).

This is what the terrier looked like (it was indeed in full derp mode).

She panted happily in my arms while I walked down the hill, trying to figure out what the hell to do with her. The other terrier was nowhere in sight. Jason stood at the bottom of the hill staring daggers at me.

Jason: “What are you doing? Stop playing with that dog and finish your workout!”

Me: “I can’t leave her here! What if she gets hit by a car? I don’t want that on my conscience!”

Jason: “Ughhhh, you’re ruining our run…you’re not bringing it home.”

Me: “Don’t worry, I won’t. I’ll take her to the cafe and see if they can hold onto her.”

I strolled over to the cafe while an exasperated Jason followed close behind. He studied the menu (“Hey, this place looks pretty good, we should try it sometime”) while I T-1000′d my way through the restaurant, asking everyone if they recognized the dog. One of the employees scrounged up some rope and tied the dog’s collar to a mail dropbox outside and gave her some water. The employees said they’d keep an eye on her and could put up flyers in the area. I left my name and number in case they or the owner needed to get in touch with me, then Jason and I ran home.

Amusingly, Jason initially gave me shit for stopping to take care of a little dog:

Jason: “You’re such a dork.”

Me, semi-jokingly: “Whatever, I’m a hero. I saved that dog’s life.”

But as the night progressed, he’d occasionally bring up the dog, wondering aloud if the owner was able to find it. The first thing he said to me when we woke up the following morning was “I wonder how Random Dog is doing.” Underneath that tough exterior is a guy who loves animals as much as I do (or at least somewhat tolerates them).

On Saturday Jason went for a run and saw some “Missing Dog” flyers for a Boston terrier with a pink collar. Her name was Mona, which I think is a terrible name for a dog that derpy looking — she’s more of a “Trixie” or a “Mitzy” (Jason started calling her Vienna after that wonky-eyed chick from The Bachelor). He didn’t grab the flyer because he didn’t want to run with it, so I called the cafe the next day and they confirmed that someone saw the dog at the cafe, recognized it from the flyer, and called the number. The owner and Mona-Trixie-Vienna were reunited (let this be a valuable lesson for the owner to get a freaking tag for his dog), I helped a dog in need, and Jason was only minorly inconvenienced. Happy endings for all!

Nonetheless, it’s Seattle, and you gotta put up with some shitty weather if you want to stick to your running regime and are absolutely useless on a treadmill (sentiments I’ll reserve for another post). On Friday I HTFU’d and yanked on the running tights + long-sleeved shirt to trudge through a quick 3 1/2 mile run through Capitol Hill. Not only was it raining, as usual, but the temperature had dropped to balls freezingly cold (if I had any, that is).

As I was running up the shoulderless and sidewalk-challenged Interlaken hill in my black running clothes, I cursed the Pacific Northwest for turning apocalypticly dark at 4 pm in the fall and winter. The last thing a driver heading up the windy road will see is my minorly crooked white teeth as my mouth pulls back into a horrific grimace while my stubby body bounces off the windshield. With my dying breath I’d utter “Damn you…Seattle…Nirvana…is…overrated…uaghhhhh.”

When I was about two blocks from home, my right foot slipped on a wet, pulpy pile of soggy decaying leaves, and my ankle promptly rolled while I windmill arm’d and jazz-handed myself back upright. Naturally, this display of grace occurred at a busy 4-way intersection that not only contained a line of cars, but happened to have a bus stop full of people who caught my America’s Got Talent live audition tape. Now I get to nurse tendinitis, Achilles tightness, and a stiff ankle.

On Sunday, I was lured to the morning group run with promises of a post-workout brunch that was kind of crappy due to Surly Goth Waitress and a sub-par biscuits and gravy with an order of poached eggs that somehow translated to “hard boiled” back in the kitchen. When I woke up that morning and checked the weather to see how I was supposed to dress for my 8 mile run, I saw “37″ sneering back at me from my iPhone. Since I don’t own a snowsuit or a Bubble Boy-esque insulated hamster wheel, I resorted to wearing two long-sleeved shirts, a jacket, running tights, a pair of shorts, and a cheapy pair of gloves. By the time I finished my workout and attempted to inconspicuously peel my freezing sweat-soaked sports bra off without flashing my chesticles to everyone in Leschi, it had already started to snow.

Today it’s 30 degrees and still snowing, and tomorrow’s forecast calls for a low of 16, a number I previously attributed to the “and Pregnant” variety, not an actual temperature. However, most of us don’t have the pleasure of living in sunny California or humid Florida (and even if we did, we’d have to deal with training in choking heat and the chance of sunstroke/dehydration). Despite its wonky and oftentimes depressing weather, I love living in Seattle. Training here is just another one of the many mental challenges associated with preparing for endurance events. If I can put up with freezing mountain conditions, searing desert heat, slick leafy roads, multiple windstorms, and pouring rain, I’ll be a more confident, headstrong, stronger athlete…even if I do look like a sausage in running tights.

Our bikes' temporary home

View from our hotel room

On Saturday Jason, his dad and I woke up and prepped everything for our ride. We parked a few miles from the transition area and started setting everything up when I realized that the black rolled up wad of fabric I grabbed and shoved into my bag wasn’t arm sleeves like I thought, but rather compression sleeves for my legs. Fudgers! It was going to be a gray, chilly day, and my wimpo arms were surely going to freeze without some sort of cover. Jason suggested I just wear my compression sleeves as arm warmers. I didn’t have any better options, so that’s what I did. I ended up with 90 miles of compressiony goodness, but unfortunately I realized two things after the ride:

1. The sleeves, which typically go from under my knee to my ankle, weren’t long enough to cover my entire arm.
2. Even though the sun wasn’t out, that doesn’t mean the rays weren’t poking through the clouds.

As such, I ended the ride with this B.S.:

This is not a good look for me

The watch tan I’m used to. The half-forearm tan? Not so much. (I’ve grown accustomed to the hairy arms though, so deal with it.) Anyway, I started riding for a whopping minute before realizing that, no fucking way, my bike computer’s cadence sensor wasn’t working again. What the shit, I just replaced this stupid thing two weeks ago! I angrily fiddled with it for a while, and it went from not reading my cadence to not reading anything. Great, now I was going to ride 90 miles with no indication of my speed or cadence.

Frustrated and fueled by rage, I took off and anger-rode for an hour. After a while, Jason appeared next to me, slightly out of breath, exclaiming, “It took me forever to catch up to you! You need to slow down!” Apparently I was averaging about 24 mph and was climbing rollers going 20. To be fair, the first 30 or 40 miles of the Canada course are pretty fast, with lots of flats/downhills and a few inconsequential hills. I pouted a bit more about my broken computer but decided to slow it down in anticipation of Richter Pass.

Before we got to the pass, Jason’s dad got an epic flat by running over a huge kinked wad of wire. He wrestled it out of his tire and changed the tube but wanted to stop at a gas station to properly fill the tire with air. While he was fixing his bike, I stopped inside to use the bathroom and buy more fuel. When I came out, I saw Jason barely hiding his irritation while a filthy grifter with roughly four teeth peppered him with questions about our bikes. Apparently this Canadian mountain man had been marveling at how nice our bikes were and said that someone should build an eight person stealth bomber out of the same carbon fiber our bikes are made from. He then paused, looked at Jason, and said, “I see you’ve got a belly under all that gear! You must work in an office, eh? This is good exercise for that!” Jason muttered a “Yeah…” while murdering the dude with his eyes, and I resisted the urge to laugh. What kind of person makes remarks about a complete stranger’s stomach? Dudes with meth mouth, that’s who.

"Your belly offends me and my professional appearance."

After our brief break, we continued on and hit the pass almost immediately. I gotta say, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. Don’t get me wrong, Richter Pass is no picnic, but you get to climb for a bit before shooting down a decent decline, then lather, rinse, repeat for a while and before you know it, you’re done. Unfortunately, after you conquer the pass (and are rewarded with a nice downhill), you get hit with a bunch of rollers that are pretty sucky, especially when you factor in a craptacular crosswind (which we got hit with on Saturday).

We skipped an out and back portion of the ride and continued on until we hit the second significant climb, which is the stretch of road leading to Yellow Lake. (Brief aside: who names a body of water “Yellow Lake”? Nothing screams “urine-soaked” like that moniker. It actually is a pretty lake though, and not at all yellow. Still, not the best name.) I thought this climb was uber-shittier than Richter because unlike Richter, which has steep climbs but brief reprieves where you get to descend, the Yellow Lake climb is pretty much a long, arduous, gradual, relentless son of a bitch until you get to the top. On the way up I saw several banana peels and wondered if Jason was trying to take me out, Mario Kart style. If only I had a red shell…

I'm gunnin' for ya, Jas

The last several miles of the bike course shoot you down a pants crappingly fast descent that scared the bejesus out of me due to the semis and crosswinds. Operation De-Chunkify has been going well for me, but at that point I wondered if I should have actually gained an extra 15 lbs instead of lost weight so I’d be better anchored and wouldn’t get bitch slapped by the wind and cars. At several points during the descent I envisioned myself getting blown over the guardrail and falling to my death while still clipped into my bike.

The next day Jas and I ran the middle portion of the run course, which is the same stretch as the first part of the bike course. We did about 15 miles in the sun and I thought about how miserable I was going to be racing in 90 degree heat considering I was already feeling overheated at 70 degrees. The “inconsequential” hills I mentioned earlier on the bike suddenly seemed like a jerk crusted bastard during the run. This will not feel good on race day.

We spent the remainder of the weekend enjoying the gorgeous scenery and buying roughly an asston of wine:

View of the swim start from a vineyard across the lake

Loitering in some Canadian's vineyard

Jason's mom gets inspired by the boobalicious mermaid statue

Our Ironman training fuel

Before we left, we flailed around in the freezing lake (“freezing” being 55 degrees) for about 20 minutes, making me think that I really need to do a couple more open water swims before Boise. Poop. Other than that, though, it was good to explore the Ironman course and dump my paycheck into many, many wine purchases. I can’t wait to come up with the team in July and do it all again. Hopefully Teresa will have some good advice on how to pace myself for the ride, and I’m counting on doing more wine tasting with some of my teammates. Don’t let me down, Ironman crew!

Yes, this is the little kid from Jerry Maguire. I'm pretty sure he doesn't have leukemia or lymphoma, but he is pretty spazzy looking so just imagine that he has Hodgkin's and be overcome with a sudden urge to help out the kid who talks about 8-lb heads.

That’s right, your favorite mediocre athlete is going to try and run up 69 flights of stairs. Me, aka the person incapable of running along a flat sidewalk without tripping. (This actually happened to me–I was running along 19th and looked down to skip a song on my iPod at the exact moment I came across a raised sidewalk groove. Before I knew it, I was flying forward and skidding my knee and hands on the hot, gritty concrete. I immediately snapped up and looked around to see if anyone noticed my blunder, and sure enough, there was a group of people staring at me from across the street with their mouths agape, silently mouthing (“silently” because OK Go was still blaring in my ears) “Are you OH-KAY?” I squeaked out a falsely cheerful and overly loud “YEAH! I’M FINE!” before scampering away as fast as I could, blood running down my leg.)

So yeah, jogging up a butt-ton of stairs can’t possibly lead to disaster for the clumsiest person in the Pacific Northwest…

Anyway, I pledged to try and raise $500, so I’d really appreciate some donations (think of it as a tip for serving up awesomely mediocre blog content). Check out my donation page at http://www.llswa.org/goto/rebeccakelley and donate some money if you like me, if you hate me but like science research, if you like me and hate leukemia, or if you hate me and want me to leave you alone. If you donate money, I promise to write an especially amusing and self-deprecating recap post about the Big Climb once I haul my ass out of bed and do the race on Sunday, March 22. I imagine the post will consist of about 30% race details and 70% post-race brunch recap.

Please donate! I also have a team page (we’re actually not Team Flabalanche, though I wish that were our name) in case you’re feeling especially charitable and want to donate more moolah, but at the very least I’d really appreciate anything you can contribute.

Case in point: my recent track workout. I showed up for my first track night in like a month, but the pattern was eerily familiar. We all do some warm up laps and some drills before Teresa tells us what the workout is and assigns a pace for each of us. Every single time she does this, she assigns everyone a pace and seems to forget about me. I ask her “What’s my pace?” and she gives me one, then she scans the group and tries to find someone who runs at the same pace as me.

And, I swear to God, whoever she pairs me with ends up running like a minute frickin’ faster than what Teresa assigned us as our pace. We all take off in a group and I check my watch to make sure I’m running at an appropriate speed, then I look up and see that the group I’m supposed to be running with is a million paces ahead of me, competing in some sort of unknown foot race that I’m most certainly going to lose. I mentally shake my fist at them and call them jerk face overachievers for running faster than they said they would. I then proceed to run by myself. This happens to me a lot.

The same thing happens with Jason. We start off on a long run together and he half-ass jogs right in front of me because he thinks he needs to hang back and run at my pace. But then if I need to stop for whatever reason (e.g., I have a cramp, that hill nearly killed me, I’m fat and out of shape), he begrudgingly slows down and walks alongside me for roughly twelve seconds before whining, “Can’t you at least jog?” Then I snap at him to run at his own pace without me, which he ends up doing. He trots back to find me every so often, which I both hate and like (hate because I hate that he’s faster than me, like because at least he’s not completely ditching me).

I’m starting to think that I’m destined to run by myself because apparently there is nobody in the entire Seattle metropolitan area who runs at the same pace as me. It’s like the Farmer in the Dell and I’m the cheese who stands alone. Or, in this scenario, I suppose I’m the cheese who runs alone. Hi-ho-the-dairy-o, the cheese runs alone. I’ve gotten pretty much used to it at this point, though. Besides, I’m not much of a talker when I run. I once ran around Greenlake with someone who talked my ear off the entire loop, with me offering up the occasional grunt and winded “Uh huh.”

But still, there’s something about having a presence next to you that’s somewhat comforting. It’s like you mentally push each other to keep going and maintain a good pace. You don’t have to exchange words or have a lengthy, heart wrenching conversation about the meaning of life or anything. Oftentimes all you need is the physical presence of someone next to you to encourage you to keep going. And I don’t have that. (Well, Jason is pretty encouraging when we do our long runs, but I find his encouragement to be great or annoying, depending on my mood. Today it was annoying, then begrudgingly great.)

Maybe I’ll tape a dummy to the side of me, you know, like one of those vaudeville acts. Or I could pay a ridiculously fast runner to trot alongside me in a tortuously slow pace, just to stick it to him. (Wait, if I’m paying him then the joke would be on me.) Or I could get faster…that could work, too. I guess I’ll just have to work hard and try to catch up with all of the fast a-holes I train with. Until then, the cheese runs alone…

Me: See, isn’t this great? It’s not too cold out, it’s not raining, it’s getting a bit dark but hey, that’s okay.
Body: I hate this. Are we done yet?
Me: No, we just started.
Body: Hey, we’re running past the Kingfish! You wanna get some fried chicken?
Me: NO. Keep going.
Body: But everything’s all hurty and I don’t like it!
Me: It’ll get better, I promise.
Body: Ok…so how long have we been running?
Me: I dunno, I don’t want to check. Keep running for a little while and then I’ll reward you by checking the time.
Body: Ok…how about now?
Me: No.
Body: Fine…now?
Me: No!
Body: Come onnnnnnn, just look.
Me: It’s been six minutes.
Body: God damnit.

We approach a hill.

Me: Come on, we can do it.
Body: This sucks! My chest hurts and my shoulder hurts and I can barely breathe and my side hurts and my abs feel tight and I hate this.
Me: Don’t you remember when you used to do hill repeats on this hill? Suck it up and run!
Body: Grumble grumble…

We get to the top of the hill and keep running. Soon we see another runner up ahead.

Me: Pass that runner.
Body: What? Why?
Me: Come on, we’re faster than her. Pick up the pace and pass her! Also, stop crossing your arms. And stand up straight. Stop leaning forward. Don’t run on your toes.
Body: Jesus, anything else, your majesty?
Me: Shut up and pass her.

We pass the runner and reach the turn around point. There’s another long, gradual hill up ahead.

Body: I hate you.
Me: This is good for you! We live in a hilly neighborhood, and it’s great for training.
Body: Arghhhh…
Me: Keep running on 15th, I need to pick up a prescription before the pharmacy closes.
Body: Fine. Whatever.

We get to the pharmacy and quickly duck in.

Body: Jesus Christ, it’s freakin’ HOT in here! Ugh, look at me. My face is beet red. I look like Louie Anderson after he’s just tied his shoes.
Me: We’ll be back outside in a second. Head over to that counter.

We walk over to the counter and pay for the prescription. The pharmacist gives us an odd look.

Pharmacist: So, uh, decided to go for a run?
Me/Body (trying to act casual): Oh yeah, no big deal, just felt like getting a quick run in.

We leave the pharmacy.

Me: Okay, I’m starting the watch back up. Keep running.
Body: Ok…hey, this isn’t feeling so bad.
Me: Yeah?
Body: Yeah, I’m not hurting as much as I did when we started. I could keep going for another hour!
Me: Well, we’re home.
Body: Ohthankgod. That was miserable.