Saggy Bottom Jeans

The wooden floor boards were cold on my back. One of my legs was wrapped around the bench to my left and the other was pressed against the mirror. I felt helpless. Grunts and groans escaped my lips as I struggled to get out of the situation in which I had foolishly found myself.

A knock at the door startled me and a hesitant female voice asked, "Is everything okay in there?"

"Definitely," I lied. "Everything is great!"

"Let me know if you need..." she paused for an awkwardly long period of time. "Help."

I gave one last effort to get out of my situation. With all of my strength, I pulled and pushed. Gah! My body failed and I collapsed into a useless heap.

Looking down at my legs, I took in my predicament: A pair of skinny jeans wrapped around my calves like a wedding band wrapped around a swollen finger. The jeans had squeezed on with some effort, but getting them off was another impasse.

Lying on the dressing room floor, I looked up at the ceiling and scolded myself for my vanity. After my surgery, all of the weight I gained went to my hips. None of my jeans fit anymore and it was too cold for dresses. I remember trying on a pair of jeans at Nordstrom, embarrassed by the size increase, but willing to overlook it in order to have some cute pants.

As the months have passed, my weight has been creeping off and the jeans have become a bit... saggy. So saggy that it almost looked like I was wearing a diaper underneath. In fact, I wrote a new theme song for every time I enter a room:

Shawty had them saggy bottom jeans
Boots tight on calves
The whole club was looking at her
She hit the floor
Next thing you know
Shawty got low, low, low, low, low, low, low, low

I digress; it was time to replace my jeans with something more flattering, but finding a pair that fit was not easy.

Female runners can empathize with me. We have all been in that dressing room, grunting and groaning as we struggle to get the jeans over our calves. They fit beautifully around the waist, butt, even the knees, but the calves? That is the piece to the puzzle that will forever be a female dog.

Send me on a 20-mile run, an 80-mile bike ride, a 7-hour hike and I have no problem. Send me into a dressing room with 20 pairs of jeans to try on and that will be the hardest workout of my day.

After taking my pocket knife out of my bra and cutting the jeans off from my calves, I hung them back onto the hanger and put on a pair of shorts. Ahhhh perfect fit.

"How did it go?" the female employee eyed me curiously.


"Great," I ducked past her and hurried out of the store before she discovered the jean massacre of 2014.

*Please note: The dressing room story is not a true story. I actually did find two pairs of jeans that I love, love, love. No jeans were harmed in the making of this story.

Runner's Walk Of Shame

What is it they say about life giving you lemons? Take them and throw them on the ground and jump up and down on them until they are mush. Yeah... that sounds about right. 

Yesterday, my friend Amy and I ran up Jesusita. On our way back down, we talked about the "Runner's Walk of Shame". C'mon, admit it: If you have ever been a runner, you totally know what I'm talking about. That moment when your hip cramps up or you realize you didn't fuel properly for a 2-hour uphill run. You push past the pain, but you notice that your pace is getting slower and slower. Then it happens. The running turns to jogging and the jogging turns to a slow-motion Baywatch Pamela Anderson bounce and that... well, that turns into a walk. You pout. You kick the rocks you pass. Grrrrr. You are disappointed in yourself and feel like a failure. Stop denying it... you KNOW that feeling. You relate to that feeling.

This morning, I committed the dreaded  Runner's Walk of Shame.

It all started two days ago. My friend Zack invited me to go run the route to his new trail race series with him. It was a long bike day for me, but I asked my coach if I could swap it out and do half my bike and the rest as a run. He kindly agreed and switched my training plan for me.

Maybe it was the three cups of coffee I had chugged that morning; maybe it was the lack of water in my system; whatever it was, my calf started cramping in the middle of the run. I've never experienced a calf cramp before. I wasn't quite sure what to do about it. I went home and foam rolled. No problem, right? Except it was a problem. Foam rolling it sent pangs of compressing, pulsing pain throughout my right calf.

The next day, I taught a 70-minute cycle class. That was followed by an hour of Pilates. After Pilates, I met up with Amy for that trail run. After the run, I went to the pool to swim 2,600 meters. I noticed the firmness of my lower leg during Pilates, but didn't think much of it. It was not until the trail run that I felt the heat. Shoot, shoot, shoot! Girl, what are you doing? We got to the top and Amy asked how I was doing. I slapped my calf and it felt like wood... in fact, it looked like wood. There was no shake, no wobble, no movement... The problem was clear: My legs are obviously stronger than my arms. Must be all those stadiums, cycle classes and squats. Just call me the calf master.

I remember walking up the stairs with Miriam at Monica's wedding. "Whoa girl," she said. "You have fantastic calves." Yeah, I do. Actually, that was the first time I realized my lower legs were stellar. Thanks for that confidence booster, Miriam!

On to the main story: Last night, I talked to my coach about my morning track workout. "I think you should do it," he said. "But I want you to chug 10 ounces of water before bed and 12 ounces at 4:30AM, an hour before your run." I followed his advice, but when I woke up this morning, I could tell immediately that today was not my day.

"Shake it off, Ash," I told myself. "It's all mental." So I ran to the track. The warm-up felt okay. I was stiff, but nothing seemed too out of whack. Rusty gave me the workout and I joined my group to run 8x200. Odds at :40, Evens at :50. That felt okay, even though I was at the back of the pack. My calf was very tight and my hip kept locking up, creating a weird cave-in of my knee as my right Mizuno hit the track. Next on the menu was a 2k, 4x800's and another 2k. No problem. I could get through this.

Then the first lemon was given. Two-hundred meters into my first 2k, my hip totally locked up and I caught myself and slowed down to a jog. I looked ahead to the group ahead of me... almost 100 full meters in front of me. I heard two runners breathing hard behind me. I pulled over to the football field. Ahh. This hurts. I galloped up the green pathway to Rusty. He looked confused.

"I can't do this. My hip is bothering me; I'm going to go see Kelly today."

I walked off the track and straight to the gym for a good foam roll. I thought that would help make the rest of my 3-mile run home a little bit easier, but an 11:00 mile was the fastest I could muster before the pain took me out. I sucked it up and ran it home. Stupid lemon. It had better start squeezing out some juice before Sunday.

On a positive not, here is my lemonade for the day: There is some evidence that big calf muscles can help you run faster. Woohoo! And life is wonderful once again. http://www.livestrong.com/article/437390-does-having-big-calf-muscles-make-you-faster/