Hold Your ‘Horses’: A Runner’s Life Hack

I try hard not to offer anything useful here, lest Writing Boots readers come to expect something for nothing.

But sometimes I make a discovery that I feel I owe to humanity to share. I’m no Jonas Salk. But the medical intervention I’m about to share with you will benefit some of us more often than the polio vaccine. In other words, Jonas Salk is also no me.

I’m a daily runner. 

And when it comes to “stomach issues” during a run, volume and viscosity are the name of what is decidedly not a game. Too much of the former and too little of the latter, and disaster can strike. 

Like car accidents, such catastrophes are most likely to occur close to the home—like, right in front of the neighbors, who will never unsee.

Why?

There’s a phenomenon that horse riders know, of a horse “smelling the barn.” That is, when you’re on a trail ride and headed home, your otherwise trusty steed will often catch the scent of the barn and pick up the pace in hopes of returning for some hay, a drink, a rest. When I was little, I had a leather-mouthed old pony take off for the barn in a dead gallop.

“Pony” is a good euphemism for an urgent “stomach issue,” which can similarly seem to sense the proximity of an available toilet, in the course of a long run.

Soon as you get within a few blocks of home, that ole intestinal nag thinks it’s the Kentucky Derby, boy.

I have checked with enough other “riders” to know this problem is universal. 

It also must be entirely psychological. So, then, the solution be. And so, I have discovered recently, it is.

When the “barn” comes into the visual or mental offing, one must focus not on the impending relief. 

Instead, one must summon all of one’s remaining powers of concentration and imagination to convince oneself (or one’s “pony”) of the discouraging thought that “barn,” in fact, is NOT as close as it appears. 

For instance, if the “pony” is within one actual block of the “barn,” one must convince the “pony”—by convincing oneself—that there’s another quarter mile to go.

Fortunately, the human mind is stronger than the “pony’s.” And so when I pick a fictional destination—and I do picture a specific “barn”—a house at an intersection far beyond my house—my “pony” slows to a canter, then a trot and down to a walk, giving me the time I need to make the last block without losing my “stirrups,” sliding off the “saddle” and getting all covered in “mud.”

To my fellow “riders,” you’re welcome. To the complaints of the scatologically skittish, I offer the great Onion headline of yore: “Best Buy’s Employee Suggestion Box Brimming With Urine.”