Trots

What's harder to catch the faster you run?

This is a joke question from my daughter, and I'm tempted to give you the answer. But I won't. Instead, I give you another question: What is harder to hold the faster you run? Did I hear someone shouting the answer "Breath"?

No matter how confident you are about your answer, my personal experience today yields an even better answer: the bowel. Try as you may, it's a lot harder than you can imagine when you're trying to fight back the call of nature during your workout.

This morning, I came across an old article on runner's trots that appeared in JAMA almost 40 years ago, and then happened to get abdominal cramps shortly after my run tonight. Did I know the magic to beat a bout of diarrhea? Of course not. But I had a sneaking suspicion that running faster was a recipe for disaster. It was that simple - and that complicated. The only solution was to find the public toilet as soon as possible, that much was plain. You yearned to be quick but your guts told you not to run. Jeez, I paused my timer reluctantly and ambled to the nearest toilet.

But then, before I got a chance to celebrate my stopping a running accident, I found myself being locked inside a public toilet (after the clock struck eleven). Translation: spending a smelly night in the toilet until someone comes to open the lock and rescue me. Ugh. So, as I tried to take solace in the fact that my trousers weren't soiled, I waited. And waited. Until another runner happened to see me behind the bar, and grabbed a park warden to open the toilet entrance door for me.

If you fancy a joke to tell your daughter, my story will be a good one. At least my daughter nearly died laughing at mine when I got home finally.