I Am Officially Hard Core - 'Cause I Said So

... and so did my shoe. 

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Let me back us up a bit.

This morning I woke up feeling drained from a day of tailgating where I actually only ate some steamed rice I bought up in the Memorial Union, and some cheese with Triscuits. Being a vegetarian at a tailgate party always assures I won't be over-eating! Needless to say, I was starving when I went to bed. So when I woke up today first thing I wanted was food, glorious food... hot sausage and mustard .... burnt, under-done, crude .... cold jelly and custard  (learned that song in 4th grade. Yeah, I've still got it!)  ;)   Scrambled eggs, Eggos and some tater tots were my breakfast of choice.

After all things were settled in my body and I had some energy I decided to head out for a run. Last weekend's long run was anything but. So today I thought 4 miles would be good. Yeah, so four miles for me is considered long - but some day I'll work up to more, can't wait!  

I bought a water bottle at the OSU bookstore yesterday (crowded with all those young college kids, ugh), so I washed it and filled it up for my run. A podcast was playing, the Garmin was timing me, and I was off!  It actually felt really good. I walked a few times, but that was just so I could drink. I'm trying to figure out how to drink on the run, but haven't been able to yet. When I got to the Duck Pond my right leg was killing me. It wanted to pause and stretch itself out. So in the company of some Canadian Geese and Mallard ducks, I massaged away the pain and resumed my run. 

I was so happy when I looked down and saw I had already done a 5K and knew I had more in me. Plus I wasn't anywhere near home, so I knew I would hit 4 miles without a problem. That's when I decided I may as well up it to FIVE miles instead. Five just sounded so much higher than 4 at the time and I knew I would be happy with myself if I did it.

And did it, I did!  Had I not run out of water, and been so close to home where I was tempted to go and crash, I could have probably done a full 10K in my fastest time yet. But oh well, there is plenty of time for that.  I go in my house, call my mom to tell her that my step-dad may come take my garbage to the dump at any time (how spoiled am I??) and proceed to take off my shoes. It wasn't until we hung up and I was grabbing my socks to put in the clothes bin when I saw this:

Okay, so I made that picture a large size. But that is because I totally bled through my sock, and was kind of impressed with myself!  My foot was almost dripping and I even got blood on my area rug because at the time I had NO idea any of this had happened.  Instead of worrying about my foot, my first thought was to throw this sock under some cold water and get out the blood. On the walk to the bathroom is when I noticed THIS:

I cannot believe I bed through my sock AND my brand new shoes! And for this, I have deemed myself a "hard core" runner!  But how girly am I that my only worry at that moment was to get my shoes free of the blood. I was on facebook and Daily Mile begging for help. In the end I did get most of it out. There are some marks of blood -- they will be left as a badge of honor.

Basically .... my house looked like the setting of a Hollywood slasher movie today.  Okay, maybe not THAT extreme, but it was pretty darn cool! I'll make this photo smaller.

Most people expected that it was a toenail rubbing into a toe that caused this. It totally wasn't! I am so anal about my toenails. I have theories on them that I will not get into, but I just always keep mine nice, and trimmed. Right now if I wanted to trim there isn't anything I could cut away. Upon inspection I see there is a boo-boo, for lack of a better term, in between my big toe and the toe next to it. No idea how it got there, and it doesn't hurt at all. But man, did it bleed! And you see that little pink chunk on the shoe insert? Yeah - that is flesh. WTF?? How on Earth did I manage this? I may never figure it out!