This blog post is the (overdue) seasonal sister to my 2016 Summer Running Funnies.
Our sport of running can be long, hard and arduous. Many miles alone through Nova Scotia wind, rain, snow, hail, sun. Sometimes all of those in one run. I believe that important ingredients to enjoying our sport over the long are: seeing beautiful things; running with people you enjoy; and laughing and appreciating the funny moments.
I have been collecting this list of funny moments all winter long. They are a collection of moments from my own training with the Halifax Road Hammers and from coaching my athletes in my role as head coach at Love Training More. If I were to add a 4th ingredient to enjoying running over the long haul, it would be to coach runners. The connection and relationship with my runners has absolutely upped the joy in my running life. And the comedy.
Without further ado, the top 10 winter running funnies:
The prologue to the top 10 list is Barry and the medal, previously recorded in my Freeze Your Gizzard Half Marathon recap. At our Love Training More Christmas party, I somehow ended up making a bozo deal with Barry. He would agree to run a winter race at the Freeze Your Gizzard. If I promised to win and give him my winning medal. This was at end of November. The race was end of February. Three months of chirps ensued. My favorite being this one in January after an indoor 3000m race:
I won the medal. I gave it to Barry. I am still waiting to see the shadow box.
1.Don’t get dropped.
My funny list started with a Strava workout title. I love Strava for the social connection and motivation and poking of fun with my teammates. My fitness returned this winter after my second half of 2017 injury lay off. Thankfully running fitness isn’t linear for most athletes so I find myself this winter in my pack of Road Hammer guys. I’m in the pack, perilously close to getting dropped in each workout. But I’m with them. All I can think about is “don’t get dropped” and running off Mike’s shoulder. I must maintain physical proximity, called close contact, or they will run away from me and I will never get them back. And I will be alone. Must avoid aloneness at all cost.
So here’s my workout with Mike and Dave:
But wait a minute, wasn’t Jeremy with us at the start of the workout?
Jer’s Strava workout title for the same workout is: “I got dropped.” Now that’s funny. Not the Jer getting dropped part. I rather him with the pack. But the title.
Then at the next practice, Jer tells me that: yes, we effectively dropped him. Then Jennie and Natalia scooped him up. And then they effectively dropped him too. He got double-dropped. Double giggle.
2. The shoes and the double decimals.
One of my Love Training More athletes accidentally ran over 1000km in her sneakers this winter. Then a little niggle popped up on her knee. She’s over it now so we can laugh. It’s always the shoes with my athletes! The old shoes are my Coaching Achilles Heel. And then there’s use of double decimals. Such as 49.96km in the submitted running logs. Smiling, I say we can just go ahead and call that 50km. Nope, the double decimals follow this coach everywhere. Now the two of these are together, lord help me.
PSA for runners everywhere, track the mileage on your shoes! Or better yet, just get onto Strava and let the site send you an email when your shoes are close to expired.
3. Beat the pants off him!
Last spring, Coach Lee and Mikey J and I travelled to Montreal for our goal spring race. It was a fun race weekend. Lots of running and joking. At one point, Lee was telling us a story about an epic race win for a friend over another friend: “he beat the pants off him.”
So victory was achieved but wait, wha?! He beat the pants off him!? What would that actually look like? Did the loser lose his drawers mid finish sprint? Did he relinquish them at the finish? We carry on with great fun with the “beat the pants.” Or at least Mike and I do. Mike yells this at me during a point in which the race comes back on itself.
Fast foward 9 months. It’s winter. I’m tucked behind Mike M and Dave in a workout on Marginal Road. I’m minding my business, exclusively focused on trying not to get dropped, in short fast intervals. Mike J appears out of nowhere and smoothly floats by us. “Beat the pants off him!” he yells at me.
A large laugh bubble blooms in my belly. I get dropped. But the giggle was a good one. And karma for giggle at Jer.
4. The Dave and Mike Dialogue.
Dave and Mike are just funny and enjoyable to run with. They poke fun. They keep it light so that we can do the work which is hard. Dave’s been battling injury this winter. I make a comment about hoping he will avoid the penalty box. He tells me that recreational runners don’t get put in the penalty box. That’s a punishment reserved for elite runners only. I laugh and I am buoyed by any reference to elite. Mind light. Body can work hard.
Some of the jokes are recycled. That’s ok, they are still funny. Besides, we are a tribe of humans who have been running the same 5km key hole of Marginal Rd as fast as our coach demands for years. The recycled jokes are the actually the more normal behaviour.
The most recycled joke is: “Erin, get up there and break the wind for us.”
Because I’m the smallest. And the only girl. We’ve gotten a lot of miles out of this one.
5. The fuel belt image
The Road Hammers are doing our weekend workout at the COLTA trail so I’m running 2km from my door to the head of the trail. I pick up two of our younger Hammer girls en route. One is super duper fast. I’m wearing my fuel belt. This will be a 32km run. With a 4km, a 6km and an 8km interval. Why is an interval even 8km long? That’s a subject for an entirely other blog post. Nevertheless, that’s a big day so I have my Gatorade and my gels and they are in my fuel belt.
Fast girl notes the presence of my fuel belt. “Erin, do you think that your fuel belt ruins your image?”
hahahaha! I laugh and I laugh. “No, girl, I don’t have an image that I care about. Does my fuel belt ruin your image of me?”
I giggle at this throughout my workout, especially when she runs by me with her pack of the fastest guys. I have my fuel belt stashed in safe place (under the Shoppers Drug Mart billboard, ha) during the intervals and one bottle on a trail bench. My workout is well fuelled. My image is….. nothing, I don’t have one!
6. The tire drags
This January, my Love Training More athlete Allana bravely registers for her first Ironman Triathlon, necessitated a crash course in the Iron distance for this coach. I ask her for a book or a website. She provides a book. I read book. I find this within book- orders to drag an automobile tire behind you:
Barry still owes me proof of a shadowbox but I bet in the meantime, he could build Love Training More a rope and tire.
I post this on our private team page. Allana says that if her weekly workout includes: “tire drags around the Commons” then she quits! I say that she gave me the book therefore: fair game. Stay tuned, folks. She does her workouts Wednesdays after work 😉
7. Moose Run Motivation
The Moose Run 25km is coming up on March 18, 2018. It’s a super challenging hilly course. Super fun social day. I want for most of my local Love Training More athletes to do this race. Coach Lee with the Halifax Road Hammers has gone ahead and mandated that practice that weekend is at the Moose Run. There will be lots of fun to be had.
So some funny griping about the Moose Run goes down on our private page. Erin is making us do this. It’s the longest we’ve ever run. We might die.
There is a relay option and a few of my runners will do this. But I’m clear that my griping runners will not. They will do the whole thing and they will not die. They are all accomplished half marathoners and have run 22km many times with race pace intervals mixed in.
So I’m enjoying the banter and then I listen to Canadian Running’s The ShakeOut podcast episode with Alex Hutchinson on the topic of his new book “Endure.”
He’s talking about the limits of human performance and fatigue being at least partially explained by mental fatigue and perception of effort. In this explanation, he states, “If you dropped a lion on the course at 35km, everyone would run faster.”
This is brilliant coaching material. Possible motivation for my Love Training More half marathoners at the already animal themed Moose Run.
8. Young Halifax Road Hammers
Another Wednesday, another Road Hammer workout at Marginal Road. You find me tucked behind the boys. I’ve already seen Mike J on the course doing easy miles, I’m prepared for his “beat the pants off him” laughing bomb. I was not prepared for young Road Hammers laugh bomb.
We are coming to the last of 11 x 3 minute intervals. I’ve done well, I’m still with the boys. The boys always drop the hammer on the last one. I’m prepared. We are out on Marginal Road, all making our way back to home base. These means the faster guys are farther out and will pass us on the way to our finish line.
Garmin beeps, we go. I’m with Mike. I hear Colin coming up on us. 1 minute to go at 3:48/km pace. Colin and a young road hammer wearing a huge hoody blast by us.
What the sweet interval heck? Why are you wearing a huge hoody? How the jesus are you so fast wearing a huge hoody? My laugh bubbles gets me. A hoody just beat the pants off me. I get dropped. The interval ends.
Young Hammer, I don’t even know who you are but keep running fast, technically clothed or not
9. The rum.
I barely even want to include this. There’s nothing funny about -24 Celsius in Nova Scotia when you have 25 to 32km to run. And your marathon is April 29 in Big Sur whether you run in the ice or not. But alas, Nova Scotia is where I live and it’s -24 and I have 27km to run. That happened about 4 times this winter. I can-not-will-not run long without fuel. I’m a busy mother-runner, there’s little recovery when I get in the door. I must be smart about recovery on the run. That requires sport drink. Which freezes around zero. Unless you add booze to it. I did many long runs this winter with rum in my Gatorade. I have the proportion just right: 1 tbsp of booze per 500ml of Gatorade. Don’t free pour, I can confidently say that’s too much. Based on experience, haha!
Someday I will look back at this winter and at that point, I will find the rum in the Gatorade amusing. My favourite funny reference to the boozed sports drink was on training partner Jer’s Strava:
RH c/d with Erin, Garmin stopped for 3k due to rum laced Gatorade =16k
10. The penalty lap
Every Sunday evening, I read my Love Training More running logs which they submit online, thanks Google forms. I look forward to this every week. Some of them are amusing. My athlete Doreen’s is consistently amusing.
Case in point, this week’s. She’s doing a 20km long run and is solo, a rare occurance. She writes that her body stopped while was running up a hill at about 16km. She’s mad at herself for stopping mid-hill. So she casually writes that she gave herself a penalty lap.
She made herself turn around, run back 100m and run that section over again.
A 100m penalty lap.
She further shares that she tells herself that if she stops again, the next penalty lap is 200m. The next one after is 300m.
That’s some serious level self talk.
My training pack have been using the “penalty box” for injured runners for awhile. I will gleefully add the dishing out of 100m penalty laps to my running life. Thank you Doreen!
The end
I am looking forward to spring miles with hope. But I won’t wish away the remaining winter miles. They made us tough and as listed, there is lots of enjoy.
May the rest of the winter be amusing for you all but just not so cold that the long miles requires rum laced Gatorade.
Thanks for reading. Send us your funny running stories so we can laugh more!
Disclaimer: No training partners or coached athletes were harmed in the writing of this blog post. They mostly all were asked for permission to appear.
