Advil, Nevertheless*

If you do a long Saturday run without stopping for water, you're going to get a headache.

If you get a long-Saturday-run-without-water headache, it will be of the mildish sort, so you'll take a few Advil.

If you take a few Advil, they'll cure your mildish headache but not the general energy drain that comes from forgetting your Cliff Blocks.

If you're experiencing general energy drain, it'll affect your creativity, so you'll decide to abandon your scrapbooking project in favor of a trip to the fabric store.

If you take a trip to the fabric store, you might just find the exact fabric you didn't know you needed in order to finally make that really cute witchy Halloween quilt.

If you find the exact fabric, you'll buy it. You'll take it home and cut it up and start working on the witchy quilt and a new table runner for your kitchen pretty spot.

If you're caught up in sewing excitement you're going to stay up far too late for two nights in a row. You'll finish the table runner and start on the witchy quilt.

If you stay up far too late for too many nights in a row, you're going to get a very non-mildish headache. The kind of headache that lasts for three days and makes even thinking difficult. The kind that no known medication even touches. Especially not Advil.

If you get a non-mildish headache, you're going to be nauseated by the thought of running. Running will be the last thing you think you could ever deal with, down there on the bottom of the list underneath things like scrubbing toilets, eating anything, or moving without wincing.

If you can't deal with running, you won't run at all. Even though there's not that much time left before your next half marathon.

If you don't run enough before your last half marathon, you'll feel anxious about the upcoming race. You'll probably decide, once your headache has finally and blessedly gone to wherever headaches go, that you need to put in one more long run, preferably ten miles.

If you decide to put in one more ten miler (after not running for 8 days), your ITB is going to flare up. On both legs. You'll have to stop running with a mile left to go, cursing your stupidity and your weakness and your *&$#%* headache, not to mention witchy quilts and table runners and the general need to always be working on some project or other you seem compulsively unable to avoid. You'll want to cry.

If you manage not to cry, and if "Authority Song" happens to come up on your random playlist, you'll at least be able to run the last half mile of your long run. Without crying.

If you finish your run without crying, you will still want to when you stop, because your knees will hurt and your legs will hurt and the back of your hip bones will hurt and you'll be exhausted because you'll realize that again: you ran too far without stopping for water. Or any Cliff blocks.

And chances are, if you ran too far (again!) without water, you're going to have a headache along with all those other aches.

Nevertheless, at least it's the kind of headache that Advil will cure.

*with apologies to Laura Joffe Numeroff, whose rhetorical style I have (none-too-successfully) hijacked for this post.

Comments

[Wendy]

hee-hee-hee!

[jamie `]

ouch. I think advil should be covered in chocolate.

[Maureen]

cute, except for the head ache and body pains.

[Britt]

Circle of life...

[Becky]

Oh, you are going to do so good on your half.

Just don't forget your clif blocks, or you water, k? ;)

[JanSC]

Simple Solution - Stop for water and whatever cliff blocks are.

[wendy]

Now I want a cookie.

[Lucy]

What a fantastic post. I've always been tempted to write one in this style because I think it is so clever.

Sorry about the pain. Honestly, I don't see what is tempting about running, at all. It always seems to hurt!

[Susan]

where are pictures of said quilt and table runner?

. . . is the moral of the story, if you give Amy an advil, she'll want to . . .hmmm . . .the possibilities are endless!