Long Train Running: A Chicago Marathon Story | Chapter 6 — 16 Post-run Requirements
Running is as much a mental game as it is physical. My trick to placing well in races when I ran cross-country in high school was to tell myself, “The faster you run, the sooner it’s over.” That doesn’t work when there are 26.2 miles ahead of you. You have to take each mile on its own or group a few together. Make the marathon bite-sized. Savor it. Until that last mile. The faster you run, the sooner it’s over. But even when you’re done running, you’re not done quite yet.
Here are sixteen post-run requirements every distance runner must complete after each long run.
• Fart.
• Use the sweat in your eyes to wash the dust and dirt from your contact lenses.
• Pilfer as much free shit from the Gatorade lady as possible without looking like a cheapskate.
• Stretch.
• Apologize to the seven people who caught loogie chunks in their faces from all of your hocking along the trail.
• Restart the podcast episode currently playing because you weren’t paying any attention to it during those final three miles.
• Sniff your armpits, confirm your deodorant is holding up.
• Hydrate.
• Call your grandmother on your way home. If you don’t have a grandmother, call your kid’s grandmother. If your kid doesn’t have a grandmother or you don’t have a kid, text your ex.
• Determine what you’ll make for breakfast. Something with quality protein even though your exhausted, dehydrated body craves only Fruit Loops and frozen mini Charleston Chews.
• Make that breakfast. Eat it.
• Nap.
• Clean the apartment in your dreams while you nap.
• Fart.
• Shower, for Christ’s sake. You stink.
• Enjoy a pack of cigarettes.
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