Throughout yesterday’s department meeting, I was constantly trying to will my co-workers to consume more and more the pizza that had been ordered for lunch. I was hoping there’d by anywhere from 0 to 3 pieces left at the end of the meeting, thus preventing me from having the chane to drastically over eat as I am wont to do when pizza is in play.

However, my Jedi mind tricks weren’t performing up to snuff. Long story short, after demonstrating the will power not to touch the cheesey, saucy and delicious triangles of awesome before and during the meeting, I was unable to demonstrate will power sufficient to not eat 7-ish pieces when there was soooo much left after the meetings. Certainly the fact that the pizzas were left on a counter directly outside of my office didn’t help, and every time that I got up for the next hour, I grabbed a slice.

Needless to say, I spent the rest of the afternoon feeling sluggish, enormous and overwhelmingly uncomfortable.

Fast forward a few hours, and I found myself changing for what I had planned on being an easy run on the treadmill. Were I to let my stomach dictate what I was about to do, it certainly would have been an easier run that even I had imagined when packing my bag with running clothes in the morning.

However, after my poor decision and lack of restraint around the lunching hour, I did the only sane and rational thing I could think of: I made myself pay for the earlier transgressions and decided to make it a hard effort on the treadmill.

I could tell as I began an easy warm-up that this was not going to be at all comfortable. You know the wat that an untightened backpack bounces around on your back when you’re sprinting to catch the bus? My stomach felt like that going at 10:00/mile pace. Clearly, the the 3x1 mile repeats I was going to force myself to do were not going to be comfortable by any stretch of the imagination.

Follwoing a 15 minute warm-up I cranked up the speed of the ‘mill until I was clipping along at 6:40/mile. “F—k!” Not even 1/10th of a mile into this and my stomach was in total knots and each stride felt like a punch in the gut. For a brief moment after going about 0.25 miles, I thought I might be finding my stride and getting into a zone where it wouldn’t feel so bad, but I was totally wrong. I finished the first mile and barely made it through the 1/2 mile rest in between repeats before having to sprint off the ‘mill and to the nearest bathroom.

Call of nature out of the way, I returned back to the treadmill and eased myself back to just under 7:00/mile pace for the next repeat. With the stomach feeling a tad bit better, my first thought once I hit speed was just how much harder doing one single mile at this pace was than it was for me to run 13.1 at 6:32 pace just two weeks ago. WTF, altitude? Though it still hurt considerably, I finished the second mile uneventfully and dialed the belt back to a resting pace for the final mile.

The first half of the final mile started off very smoothly. My legs were feeling half decent for the first time, the sloshing in my stomach seemed to have subsided considerably, and I was able to take full breaths without the fear of hurling all over weightroom. Alas, things turned south very quickly, and I found myself running in fear over the final mile that a bowel movement might not wait for me to get off the treadmill and into the bathroom. As soon as the last mile was completed I was off the ‘mill and into the men’s room before the belt could even slow down. WHEW!!

…..So maybe what I did wouldn’t be considered sane and rational by 99.9% of the human species. But it was kinda fun, in a sick, twisted and really-really-really demented sort of way. It was a good suffer-fest, though of a completely different variety than the long climbs in the mountains that I prefer. Above all else, though, I think I’ll think twice before gorging like that ever again… and if I do, I know there’ll be a treadmill waiting for me.