Somehow Charles talked me into doing the Primal Mud Run on Saturday. It’s true that I’ve been adopting more of his crazed fitness strategies over the last year, but this was still an entirely new thing for me. I’m not a very good runner, and making my 5k debut with an event that also involved mud and obstacles was daunting. Today I’m sore and my lungs seem to still be reconfiguring themselves to a level of functional ambition they had never before considered. But I’m glad I did it.
One part was particularly interesting. The most unpleasant obstacle involved wading into a very cold pond and swimming under some barrels. You know how when you hit your thumb with a hammer or burn your hand on the stove, and say “Ow!”, there’s some sense of volition tied to the exclamation? I mean, it’s not a deliberate act, exactly, saying “ow”. But you could suppress it if you wanted to.
Well, each time I came up from under those barrels I was surprised to hear myself emit a sort of pathetic howl/whimper, not dissimilar to the ones tough-minded Jack Bauer might have drawn from a sinister interrogation subject. It was just completely automatic and beyond my control. It’s always interesting and horrifying when you discover some new thing your body does without asking your permission. I trudged through the rest of the event in a kind of animal stupor, and when I was done Charles had to show me where I’d left my jacket.
But this was all pathetic and ludicrous. A hundred yards away, trucks were selling beer and barbecue sandwiches. Other participants were running in halloween costumes, tutus and thrift-store suit jackets.
All of which just goes to show that I would have made a terrible Marine. And the next time you hear me speculating about strategies for surviving the collapse of civilization, you should probably roll your eyes even harder than you normally would’ve.