The perils of being hardcore

Last month, I decided that I had made the transition from mediumcore to Hard. Core. It happened one day when I was running. It had been snowing all week and the sidewalks were icy and slushy and generally a mess. But I just couldn't run on the treadmill one more time without losing my mind, so I strapped some traction on my feet and hit the streets.

There I was, running down Mass. Ave. and Aretha Franklin's Respect came on my iPod. As this happened, a woman drove by and gave me a thumbs up with an amazed look on her face, like "You go girl!" And while I was waiting for a stoplight to change, some guy told me how incredible he thought it was that I was out running. The weather sucked, but I felt like a rock star. Take that, New England winter! California Girl is in the hizzouse!

So yesterday, I thought it would be fine to go for a 10 to 11 mile run in the snow. I woke up in the morning to find that a light coating had fallen over night. The forecast called for "snow showers," which to me means light, pretty, intermittent snow. Snow was falling gently as I left the house and I figured that it would probably stop soon.

When I got outside, I realized that things weren't as pretty as they had looked from my window. The wind was blowing the snow into my eyes and that nice light layer of snow made the ruts in the sidewalk hard to see, so I kept falling all over myself. And the snow that was supposed to stop just got heavier. So there I was, trudging along, half-blind, when a dumbass driver zoomed by and splashed me with muddy water. I won't write what I said as the car obliviously drove away, but it wasn't very polite.

Around mile 5, I decided to call it quits and go home. Unfortunately, I was still about a mile and a half from my house, but I figured I could stick it out. As I turned and headed in the general direction of defeat, I realized that the snow had changed yet again and was like tiny ice-pellets of death being shot directly into my eyes by the increasing wind. My eyes were burning and I was running (shuffling, really) down the street with one eye closed and the other only partly open. As my eyes watered profusely, I wondered if they could actually freeze shut. I must have looked like I was having a stroke or something. Good thing I didn't see any young children because I'm sure I would have scared them.

The good news is that I finally made it home, though I was cranky, wet and the top of my head was encased in ice. The bad news is that when I went to take a scaldingly hot shower, there was only lukewarm water. Evidently, everyone in the building had already taken a shower in boiling water and was doing their laundry at exactly that moment. Bollocks!

After my third-world shower, I looked out the window again and saw that the snow had stopped and a happy-looking group of runners was going by. They are really lucky that I didn't throw any snowballs at them.

After all this, I'm not so sure I'm hardcore anymore. Or that I necessarily want to be. It's a lot of work and it messes up my hair. Maybe I should be in the hizzouse by just staying indoors.

I'm ready for spring now.