The Agony of Training, the Stench of De Feet

Everyone has been clamoring for more stories of the pain and hardship I go through to train for this (CLAMORING, I tell you!) and of course I must oblige. So, here, not necessarily in order of most painful or most disgusting to least, are what some of you mere mortals might call "hardships." For us half-marathon trainer types, they are annoyances barely worth noting. But (SIGH) what my adoring public wants, it gets.

STENCH: The first thing I noticed was the smell of my shoes. As mentioned previously, they do get pretty darn wet every time I run, which is 4-5 days a week. I let them dry out in a sunny spot or near a vent every day, but still. They started to give off an odor of mud, and rotting vegetation, and swampy water. Meh, I said. I'll put them in the sun a few more hours. Doesn't bother me. Then I noticed a similar, yet far ranker smell coming from my hamper where I throw my used running clothes. One whiff and I was nearly knocked on my butt by the stench. I gathered them up and threw them in the laundry as fast as I could, before they could contaminate the other clothes in the room. Then I came in the house one day after cleaning other people's house's all day - and ya know how scents are more apparent to you after you've been in someone else's house, or even outside? I smelled something stale and latrine-like right away. In fact, it smelled like the kitty litter needed to be changed. So I went downstairs and changed it. Went back upstairs - the smell was still there. Went back downstairs, plugged in the oil-based air freshener thingies that my husband always unplugs because he can't stand them. Went back upstairs. Still smelled like a sub-arctic outhouse. Went outside again. A diesel truck went by, and that was fresh as a daisy compared to my house. Stood on the porch for awhile. Scanned the immediate area for dead squirrels or birds, or rotting fruit. The hairs on the back of my neck started to stand up as a little voice in my head whispered "Suzy- I think the smell is coming from INSIDE the house!"
Went back inside, cautiously. Left the door open so fresh air could get in. Followed my nose around the living room, dining room (really the same room)and into the little hallway to our bedrooms- right back to my closet/hamper area. Yep. Was it the hamper? Nope, I'd just emptied it of all stinky items. Closet? Just dust and some shoes on the floor. Something... near... here... and then I saw it. The hydration backpack-thingie I had last used about a month earlier. Yes, the remaining water inside could certainly be moldy by now. But this was different. I gingerly removed it from the hook on the door. Unzipped the main compartment. And nearly lost consciousness.

Not only was month-old electrolyte water in the bladder, but I'd forgotten about the running clothes I left in there from a training run one Saturday in September - an exceptionally sweaty, timed "speed" run, after which I bicycled straight over to the PBS kids event downtown to meet my sweeties. Entonces, extra rank-ness. Smell is the sense that apparently is connected straight to your brain's receptors without any silly left-brain translational interference going on. Which is why smells are tied so closely to certain memories in our heads. It goes back to when we were hunter/gatherers and this kind of thing was actually useful. E.g. you have no choice but to remember that acrid-smelling cave where the saber tooth cat ate your best friend, AND that sweet-smelling place in the cedar grove where the deer like to sleep and are easy to sneak up on and kill.

I wish my memories were that pleasant. This one took me back to the time my brother left one of his baseball practice jerseys thrown carelessly over a chair at the kitchen table, when we both were in high school. His room was in the basement by then, as it should be for all teenage boys, and usually his clothes went right down there with him. For some reason, this special day he just HAD to unburden himself of that jersey right in the kitchen. And leave it there. Around innocent food, and people. I kid you not, we couldn't even walk through the room without gagging. Instead of subsiding over the next few hours, the smell intensified, and got worse. We opened windows. We opened doors. Nothing helped.

Finally I braved the general area and flung open the door to the basement. "JIIIIMM! TAKE YOUR SHIRT DOWNSTAIRS - IT STINKS!"
"Cha. Does not. Whatever." (teenage boy grunting)

Finally, even our mom, who usually thought his poop smelled like roses and golden drops of ambrosia fell from his lips every time he spoke, caved to the stench.

"JIII-IIM! COME GET YOUR SHIRT RIGHT NOW OR I'M THROWING IT OUTSIDE!" No answer.
The dog, whose food and water bowls were near the table and said stench, started to whine. Finally I think one of us took the longest-handled tool we could find, stretched it out as far as we could while one person held the door to the basement open, caught an edge of the contaminated fabric and flung it downstairs as fast as possible, while the person holding the door slammed it shut.
Years later, while talking to someone who had majored in Physical Education or physiology or something, I learned that teenage boy sweat actually holds phenomenal amounts of hormones, mostly testosterone- not surprising- but also, get this: PROTEIN. As in, slabs of steak and eggs, muscle-building, protein. So when it is allowed to sit out for hours without being washed away, guess what? It starts to rot. Just like a huge, unwashed bison carcass in your living room.
Similar to what I smelled a few days ago in my hydration pack. I had no long-handled instrument to assist me, so I just had to dump the whole thing in a basket and again, run down to the laundry,dump about a pound of detergent on top of it, crank on the HOT water (which I never do) and hope for the best. It's hard to come up with adequate verbiage and adjectives to describe the reeking- but trust me, friends, this was some weapons-grade stench. If it fell into the wrong hands, I shudder to think at what would happen.

So if I don't knock out my teammates with deadly fumes wafting from my slow-moving body, I will complete this half-marathon. By gods, I will.
Next week's hardship in detail: butt chafing.