Not Another Running Story

At work we just started a new schedule that gives us hard-working employees every other Friday off. The catch of this, because there is always a catch, is that on those weeks we have Friday off, our schedule goes from 8am-5pm to a new and not so improved 7am-6pm. Ten hours is a long time, yes. Any of you that have worked 10 hour shifts, you know, tis murdah. However, Friday off will be extremely legit. I've got two primary issues with new schedule: 



1. Sunday was day light savings. Leaving work at 6pm in total darkness gives me a very paranoid feeling that my whole day is gone and I am watching my life, my youth, and my twenties pass before my eyes without any control.

2. When will she run? I can guarantee you homegirl AIN'T getting up at 4:30 am to run. I am psycho, but I'm not that psycho. Stay tuned.


Well unfortunately they didn't ask me when I want the sun to rise and set (if they do, I've got an answer ready, naturally), so I'm just going to have to let my paranoia subside. As far as crack running goes, I've decided to take on the challenge of running over my lunch hour-ish. I say ish because let's get real, no reasonable person can run, shower and eat lunch in under an hour. Maybe I have to just put a little, teensy fib on my time card. I am usually very paranoid and anxious about lying at work, but for running, I  break all normal rules of human conduct make an exception. 


Just yesterday I found out that my place of work has locker rooms and A shower. That's one. Singular. Shower. Yesterday late in the afternoon, I scoped it out just to see what I was getting myself into. It was interesting. This is me being optimistic. This shit is straight out of a horror movie. It is like the shower from Psycho and the bathtub from What Lies Beneath had a baby. Of course, me being me and completely addicted to running, will do anything for my DOC (a good friend just clued me in that this means, drug of choice). So I look at the sad shower yesterday and think:

Meh, I can make this work.

news.softpedia.com

 PLUS

shine.yahoo.com

 EQUALS

 Actual photos. Shower is in that creepy corner to the right. Behind the scarier brick wall. This is my nightmare.

  

Today was day one of my lunch hour running experiment. Read on to see how successful I wasn't...


You know what I forgot? A towel.


I went anyway. My rationalization for post-shower was that I would just use my running clothes to dry off a little.  


You know what my running clothes are? Dry fit. 


And very, very smelly. Does it even make sense to take a shower and then rub sweaty, smelly running clothes all over your body? It did at the time. 

You know what else I forgot? Soap. 


Instead I used my very expensive Aveda shampoo for body soap. Budget fail. 

The shower has two pressures, trickling nonsense and power wash. I opted for power wash just because I wanted it over with asap. Ouch.

I shower as fast as humanly possible and then jump out of the shower and use PAPER TOWELS to dry off. At this point, I am moving so quickly because God forbid someone I work with sees me in this state. I'm blotting my whole body and armpits with scratchy paper towels and can you imagine what a schizo I look like? Since I'm moving so fast, I start sweating again and I'm scrambling for my clothes and have you ever tried to put jeans on when your legs were wet? It's totally ridiculous and not even possible. Some how I get my clothes on and now they're wet too and my hair is a moppy disaster and my mascara is running all over my face and I'm looking...looking...no hair brush. GGUUUHHHHHH. So I say fuck it and throw my hair in a soggy, tangly bun on top of my head. 

Still sweating. 

How am I doing so far?

Nonetheless, I refuse to surrender to my horror film shower so I'm trying this again tomorrow. Sigh. 


A positive of this experience is that I did feel pretty city girl-esque running through the streets of Downtown Houston. So chic. So much famousness. 

oakhurstrunningclub.blogspot.com

As a result, I am looking pretty rough the second half of this work day. 

Does it sometimes feel like you learn every lesson the hard way? Yeah, me too.