INCONTINANCE

Tackling tough subjects, it’s what I do. So in that spirit I shall let the reader in on something the magazines are not spelling out. As a road racer, we have access to information on how to reach our lactic acid thresholds (please see another book for what the hell that means), activating our fast twitch muscle fibers, troubleshooting sciatica and plantars ficisitis, improving gait, and shaving minutes off a 10K, to name a few. I even know how to put little round bandages on my nipples to prevent chafing (not my nip…it’s if you’re a guy – I don’t …nevermind). What I want to know is how not to, well, go on myself. I know, many of you are thinking, “Yeah! Now, that’s my resolution! Better bowels in the new year!” Here’s how I tried to deal: I figure, all the best runners have mantras, affirmations they say in their minds when they face fear, fatigue, hit the wall or other adversity on the course. I got myself one of those mantras. Now whenever I am yards away from a portable or, if I’m hallucinating and see a proper bathroom in front of me, I just repeat, in a very sure, confident, voice-inside my head, over and over until I almost believe it, “Not a shitter”. I close my eyes and keep repeating, “Winners never shit and shitters never win”, “Winners never shit and shitters never win”. I should tell you that doesn’t work. I found that when I’m busy drilling thoughts into my head, especially lies, I can’t place my focus on squeezing the cheeks shut, which (all in favor?) is where my mind needs to be.

I came too close to call (and as it would have it, too far from a john) during a trip to Salem, Mass last summer. I was leaving a beachfront park, a spot recommended to me by a non-runner, the kind that takes twelve times around to equal a mile. Feeling like a caged mouse, I set out to pound the avenue and rather than try to remember mantras, actually fighting to keep them out of my head. I couldn’t get away from “The problem’s not your gait, it’s something that you ate!” I battled between my conscience, which relented, “Sausage and peppers? That’s not fuel, now you’ll crap your shorts, you fool!” Then my mind started racing with things that didn’t rhyme, like “There’s a first time for everything”. I debated whether to walk (usually I don’t take breaks and have something to prove, but not today!) in case it calmed things down, or to run which shakes things up more but at least affords you quicker arrival at your destination. I even went over what I could say to the people who were putting me up had I bumped into them – I would tell them I had to pee really badly. When you say you have to pee people don’t think you’re grotesque, merely human. Peeing is a fact of life. Tell someone you have to poo really bad, and they look at you like, “Who does that?”

At the risk of having you, the reader, suspecting I’m weird for discussing bodily comings and goings, I have chosen to finish the incontinence discussion and dive right into the flatulence discussion with no bathroom breaks. I’d rather be thought of as someone who goes on and on about it than the person who brought it up later once you’d forgotten about it.

Pointing fingers at childbirth, age and other potential culprits for why I fart, I have found, is a waste of time. I needed to get at the when, the where if I am to prevent, if not mask this problem. I’ve realized that, say, being in the right place at the right time, inopportune moments present themselves constantly, you just have to show up.

Take sitting. If you do it for a long period of time, try to stand up and lift a two-year-old above your head at a birthday party in front of family, you’re going to pass gas. But let’s apply this to running. In our sport, we have what’s called the talk test. One main tenet of this measure is that it allows the runner to assess whether they’re going faster than their ideal heart rate. This can be done by talking to your training partner or yourself if you’re wacked. If you can’t maintain a comfortable conversation, the prevailing wisdom is that you’re going too fast. I never understood this since I thought running wasn’t supposed to be comfortable, otherwise it would be called jogging, but what do I know? I believe flatulence is an underrepresented issue that is not addressed in any of the go-to publications. Think of me as the one who wants to put a face on farts. Now I am self-trained so I run alone. But I still have people in front of me and in back of me, and I wanted to see if they could hear my sounds, if you will, so I devised the fart test. It differs from the talk test in that the talk test involves absolutely no coughing whatsoever. It’s faster and easier when participants follow these steps:

1. Switch music player to “off” position, if applicable.

2. Just before each episode, cough in time

I concluded that if I could remember to cough, I could continue to fart with no interruptions to my training. It’s the same with the pee/poo (paradox). If people think you cough a lot, it’s a fact of life, right, whereas farting a lot? Who does that? Certainly, not me. Prove it. Now if I could cough flatulance’s much more evil and unforgiving stepsister, incontinence, away, I could train even harder. Though I’m not too quick to chalk my sprints to the potty up to junk miles – some of my most explosive (make no mistake: all of my puns are intended) legwork was done not en route to a finish line but to the john.