Wardrobe Malfunction

This morning I ran my pants off.

Not that I was going that fast. No. What I mean is, my pants fell down while I was running.

This was a first for me in 27 years of doing this sport. And though it could have been much worse, it's not a milestone I care to repeat!

I almost wimped out of doing this morning's run outside. I stepped out at 5:10 a.m. to gently falling snow and wet sidewalks. It was the first such weather of the season, and faced with it I almost went back inside to change into shorts so I could run at the gym.

The view at the ponds at the end of my run

The workout was a complicated one involving a tempo section followed by some fast 75-second intervals....followed by another tempo section and some more 75-second intervals (plus the usual warm-up, strides and cool-down). It would have been nice, in a way, to have it on a piece of paper right in front of me in the well-lit cozy rec center.

But I had dressed myself for the cold, and I didn't really want to go back inside and change. Another feature of my outfit that might have made the gym too warm were the compression shorts I was wearing under my capris. I don't usually wear them during runs, but my right hamstring has been tight. Not wanting to injure it for real, I slept last night with it wrapped in an Ace bandage and, on the advice of my chiropractor/ART guy, Dr. Hansen, will wear the compression shorts for everything other than easy runs until my half-marathon, now in a mere two weeks.

Once I was off and warmed up, the weather felt perfect, another magical morning to be out. The snow drifted down but no wind blew and the gravel around the ponds wasn't icy at all. Mist rose from the water and the waterfowl were out as they always are. I wasn't even the only person on the path. Two women passed me running the opposite direction, and several older people were out walking, too, either with eager dogs or alone. Being outside when it's cold is underrated.

Running fast is easier for me when it's cold. But that doesn't mean it's easy, especially at the end. For the 75-second pick-ups, I was allowed to disregard my heart rate and just fly. For the last set, I let my mind be obliterated in my music (my "All Mumford & Sons" playlist).

That's why it was only at the end, when I finished the last interval and began cooling down, that I noticed the wan sun had risen and suffused the grey sky with light, that a beautiful heron was perched on an islet in the middle of one of the ponds....and that my capris, sliding against the slippery surface of the compression shorts, were now hanging out with the waistband at the middle portion of my thighs.

I looked like this:

At least my compression shorts were all black. (Thanks New York Times for the image.)

I have no idea how long I had been running like that. It was in sharp contrast to the elated state of my mind, which felt like that of an angel who has just come back from soaring around the Milky Way, as I always feel after a hard session that went well. Fortunately there was no one else around to see the state of my pants, so I hitched them up and retired to the bathroom, where I was able to remove the compression shorts altogether before heading home.

So now I can say I once ran my pants off. But not all the way off. Just enough to be either stylish in a frat boy sort of way......or (since frat boy isn't really my style at all) ridiculous.