[Warning: this post is about pooping.  You have been warned.]

Ever since my birthday, when I was absolutely waylaid by an ear infection, I have struggled with my running.  Prior to my birthday, I was in a very good groove, and I was routinely completing 5K runs under 30 minutes, which is my usual every day goal whenever I lace up my sneakers and go out for a run.

But ever since my birthday that I spent laid up in bed the entire time, and struggling to get over the ear infection and subsequent what I’m guessing was what seemed like rupturing my ear drum, I have not been able to get back to my old running speeds.  Perhaps it’s age actually starting to catch up to me in some way, shape or form, or perhaps the sickness really took a lot more out of me than I had hoped it would.  Maybe it’s a combination of both, but the fact of the matter is that since then I don’t think I’ve been able to log a sub-30 5K time since April, and I try to not get too down about it, because Father Time outlasts everyone, and from what other runners try and encourage to me is that my split times for my age are still above average.

I’ve lightly dieted and been experimenting with stride and pacing, but nothing seems to get me back to where I’m seeing a leading 2 on my tracker when I hit my stopping point, and even though I’ve been able to occasionally get my pace back to a sub-10 minute mile, my overall 5K times have always crossed the 30 minute threshold.

I don’t know why I typed this all out because it really doesn’t have anything to do with the main subject of this post, but since it’s all related to running I think it just presented itself to me as the best opportunity to get that off my chest without having to make a dedicated post about it.

But anyway, I was on a morning run recently, and probably the #1 biggest concern while running started to emerge near the midway point of my run: the mid-run #2.  All through my running life, I’ve always tried to be cognizant of my body’s status whenever it comes to checking off all of the mental boxes before going on a run, be it casual training or on a formal run or race.  Every runner does, no matter how much they might not want to talk about pooping, it’s just human nature, and everyone poops.

Either way, I actually took care of business prior to this particular run, but perhaps again, symptom of aging, it wasn’t adequate enough or for whatever reason, while I was in the middle of my run, warning alarms started going off in the body that indicated that something inconvenient was about to occur.  And believe me, this is the absolute worst thing any runner wants to have to deal with, because it’s not often where relief is ready at a moment’s notice, be it on the trail, on the course, or casual outdoor running.

Fortunately for me, I had relief available to me, and it was conveniently on my route.  There’s a little park that I pass twice on my usual route, and there happens to be a surprisingly clean little public commode at it, and as long as it wasn’t occupied when I rolled up, I knew it was going to be one of those days where as much as I didn’t want to stop my momentum, it was better than the alternative of risking another 21 minutes to get home and shitting myself along the way.

Thankfully, the facility was available and I was able to take care of business, and as inconvenient as the whole process of stopping, and doing the deed can be, the amount of relief and satisfaction at knowing that you basically saved your own life and completely neutralized the risk of one of the most miserable indignities of the world, offsets the negative.

And in the case of this post, not only does it offset the negative, it outright becomes a positive, because once the physical strain of managing a bowel movement is eliminated from the body, the body is now free to focus all of its energy at the original task at hand – running, in my case.

The thought crossed my mind while I was breezing through the remainder of my run, because I now use a fitness tracker as opposed to all the years in which I did not, I actually have the capability to check out the tangible results of physical performance before and after taking care of business.  I amused myself with this scientific hypothesis, and looking forward to viewing the data after the run helped occupy my mind while I was finishing up my run.

Once again, I did not finish in under 30 minutes, nor was my 5K split under 30 minutes either.  My pace was fortunately still under a 10-minute mile, but I’m still handcuffed from notching that sub-30 5K that I’d like to get back to, and I don’t think I’ll get there unless I simply run more than I do now, but that would come at the expense of lifting weights, which is something I also enjoy doing and harvesting the fruits of such labor.

But no matter, when I got home and checked the data of my run on my phone, I was tickled to see the heat mapping of my pace; I had assumed that my general speed was going to be better after the bathroom break versus before it, but the fact that a lot more green and blue (slower) pace before stopping, and almost entirely yellow-to-red pretty much the entire way back was absolutely hilarious.

The power of 2 is something truly stupendous, and I likened the bathroom break to my bros to being like Sonic the Hedgehog when he hits a springboard on a wall and it sends him shooting off at immediate high speed.