Runnin' With The Devil

I'm sitting here stuck between full throttle and the full force of the emergency brake, my blood alive with endorphins while my body is already asleep. What part of my brain is typing is a mystery, but stranger things have happened. And may happen again if I don't make tonight's deadline.

It sounded like a good idea at the time: link up with some guys from work and head over to the five kilometer (3.1 mile for guys like me who equate the metric system with the French and despise both equally) road race, pound some pavement for a while, and hit on some athletic local girls in tight sports bras. Glorious, and there'd be free food afterwards. Sounded like a solid plan.
We met up after work and piled into my friend's SUV, fired up the engine and smelled the sweet smell of American mechanical highway domination. Fuck the rainforest, that engine purred. Fuck it with a bulldozer's dick. I didn't care one way or another, as a formidable adversary presented itself at the exact moment my ass hit the seat: a big, slobbery tongue licked me right in the ear.

Dude has a dog...in the car. I love dogs, but I have wicked allergies to anything with more hair than a college girl. This presented something of a problem, as on the ride across town to the race my nose and throat closed up. Barely able to breathe in the car, I panted and snorted, the dog panted and licked itself, and we found ourselves equal butts of continuous jokes. All's fair before a competition.

At the registration tent I found the packet with my runner's number and a little electronic dog tag that's read by a computer at the finish line. Now I'm in a pretty conservative place, the sort of city with a church on every corner and a cross on every neck, surrounded by upstanding and decent people, and I pull out runner number 666. Today was day five of the "I hate shaving" strike, my hair was frozen in impossible positions by dog spit...and the 666 on my chest seemed a little too appropriate.

The kicker came when an old woman walked up to me while I was stretching and asked if she could take my picture, then zoomed in so all she could get was my face, number and crotch. Who knows what the hell's going to happen to that photo between here and the wall at the Happy Valley Home for the Disturbed Elderly. I might become an underground celebrity. "When Grandchildren Turn Evil," and other pamphlet-ready material bound for nursing homes and conservative middle schools.

I was at the front of the pack, in front of all 2,000 of us, when the starting pistol went off. That was, incidentally, the last time I was at the front of the pack of all 2,000 of us. This lanky guy in gym shorts from a 70's gay porno bounded ahead, followed by a guy from South Africa who could damn near outrun time itself, and the rest of us got the overwhelming feeling of standing still while the leaders screamed off into the distance.

Actually, the feeling I had was more of drowning, falling ever deeper and deeper into a writhing sea of humanity as dozens of high school heroes and twenty-something hotshots rocketed ahead of me. This tapered off around the two mile mark, when the pack had settled into more or less a steady pecking order. The anorexic guys who run ‘til they're dead were in front, followed by high school kids and championship runners, then average Joes running for all they're worth for reasons unknown to anyone, then me, then the mass of folks who questioned—about at the first mile mark—why the hell they let their wife/husband/hallucination talk them into the damned affair. In the rear of this seething mob were the men with beer bellies, the bigger the belly, generally the farther back. If we were being chased by lions across the Serengeti, it would be easy to pick out who'd get naturally selected right out of the gene pool.

Fast forward to the end of the race, after I've sprinted through the finish line. I was hallucinating from the effort, the natural chemicals coursing through my blood, the whole works, but I was sure of two things: that the ground was under me, and that under me meant somewhere slightly to the left. A sharp collision with the ground corrected my perception, and I suppose it could have been worse: one of my teammates was projectile vomiting into a plastic shopping bag while children fled in terror. The hardcore runners cheered him on. He just kept puking.

There was a free food tent in the cool-down area, so I collected my wits and wandered over to make dinner from handouts. First up was a round of fresh apple cider, which I chugged like cheap beer. Then I fished my hand through a bucket of orange slices, and over the next few minutes ate about an orange and a half. Back I went to the juice stand for another round of cider, and an apple-mash-donut. It all seemed like a great idea at the time, and really hit the spot as I stood in line to check my standings.

305th out of about 2,000 folks. Not bad. My grandma would be proud, and you know you've succeeded in life when you can look back and say "man, grandma would be so proud of _______ (insert name here)." Conversely, you really aren't having a good time until you realize, "Holy mother, I should probably kill the witnesses..." The race was the former, while the latter type of party is scheduled for Memorial Day Weekend.

The car on the way back leaked a solid trail of adrenaline, testosterone, and dog spit. War stories were swapped. Laughs were had. Taunts were made. And somewhere in the traffic jam I discovered the horrible truth about drinking, and eating, that much fruit-product on an empty stomach after running a 5k race.

We hit the back parking lot twenty seconds before "just in time". I ripped the door open ten seconds before, I hit the second floor landing five seconds before, and with a mighty "BRRROOOOAAAAWWWWRRRR" I sprinted across the sales floor in a fury of pumping legs and dropping pants that scared the beejeezus-shit out of everyone watching. The things I did to that bathroom left parts of my brain, and parts of the bowl, scarred for life.

Ah hell, not every story has a moral.