Soapy Shorts

This morning I had to get up and do a long run since I'm an idiot and decided that running a marathon would be a good thing for me to do. The forecast was for possible showers and thunderstorms this afternoon, so I woke up at 6:00 am, and of course it was raining. Dang it. I had some breakfast, and the rain stopped. Wee! I headed into the city and when I got to Central Park, the skies were lighter. Things were going my way!

I'm jogging along listening to an old mix that Chris made when we first started dating. I'm about 2 miles into my 10 mile run, and I'm feeling pretty good. For once, there aren't many people jogging in the park, and there's a stretch where I don't see any other joggers. I have a little moment with Central Park, and it's great, I love the Park. Then I notice that the sky has gotten quite dark all of a sudden, and I realize why no one else is in the park. I see lightning, and as soon as I hear the thunder, the skies completely open up and dump their shit down on me. It's a fucking monsoon. I'm drenched the instant it starts raining, so I just keep running because it's not going to do me any good to stop. At this point, I'm up at the top of the park near the North Woods, and all I can think about is that dude who got hit by a tree branch in Central Park during the storm on Wednesday, and it knocked him into a coma. (Oh, just google it. I'm too lazy to find you a link.) So I'm not just running through a downpour, I'm zig-zagging all over the place (it's harder to hit a moving target), trying to stare up at the trees to keep alert for any branches that might snap off, hit me in the head, and put me in a coma/kill me/prevent me from driving to South Carolina tonight. It rains for about 10-15 minutes, and then abruptly stops. I mean, abruptly. One second it's pouring, the next the sun is all like, "Helloooooooooooooo!"

The minute the sun comes out, the park fills up with other runners. Other runners who were undercover during the storm and are therefore dry. They are all staring at me because I look like I just fell into the lake.

I look down and realize that maybe they're not staring at me entirely because I'm dripping wet. When I glance down, I see that my legs are entirely covered in giant, white, soapy bubbles that are cascading down my legs from my shorts. Here's the thing, I usually hand wash my gym shorts so I can reuse them, and by "hand wash" I mean, I soak them in a sink full of soap and water and then hang them out to dry. No rinsing necessary.

Turns out, the rinse is necessary. I tried to wipe the soap off my legs, but it just kept coming out of the shorts. There was nothing I could do to stop it because even though it had stopped raining, it was humid enough and I was sweaty glowy (girls don't sweat, they glow--and I was glowing like a pig) that the wet shorts just stayed wet and kept producing soap. Did you ever see the picture of that guy who shit his pants while running a marathon? (Okay, I'll go ahead and find the link for you on this one. Here you go.) Yeah, it was like that, but with soap instead of poop.