TIFU by sh*tting in the bushes at a high school

So I’m training for a local 10k race in a couple months. That’s about 6.2 miles. Not a long race but not a short one either. I’m making good progress and tinkering with what works for me on longer runs, how I can keep my body moving at an easy, consistent pace for about 70-80 minutes. I’ve been increasing the distance over the past few months, prioritizing getting the distance down before I work on pace.

I train early mornings at a local high school track within walking distance of my house. They have public hours almost every morning from 6-8 am. It’s a very nice track with good lighting and ✨no public bathrooms✨. Because I’ve been focused on increasing distance I’m waking up earlier and earlier to get to the track and really hammer it out before I go home and shower for work. In turn, I’ve been drinking a little extra COFFEE most mornings get my body going.

Til now this hasn’t been a problem, I don’t leave the house until my body takes care of business. I successfully dropped the kids off at the pool THREE TIMES before bouncing down to the track this morning. ONE LAP in and my guts are writhing. Cool cool cool. Half a lap more and I feel like I must have licked a Taco Bell toilet seat, I know I’m not gonna make it back home, it’s way too early in the am to seek relief at a coffee shop nearby, I’m a goner. Fortunately it’s still dark and there’s only four or five other runners. I slink into some of the (beautifully manicured) bushes by the track and wait for the runners to lap me, then I rip down my shorts and a stream of hot diarrhea shoots from my backside AND DOES NOT STOP for a full 15 seconds. I grab fistfuls of LEAVES like a caveman off a nearby bush to wipe myself and manage to jerk my shorts back up before the runners lap me again.

I am immediately feeling much better. I’m thinking to myself “act normal, act normal” and resume jogging perkily, like I didn’t just evacuate my entire colon under a poor tree. Everyone keeps jogging, I’m so paranoid and embarrassed that I don’t stop jogging out of fear someone will approach me about my Crimes the minute I take my earbuds out and I accidentally PR my 5k just trying to seem inconspicuous. FOUR MILES LATER, all the other joggers finally leave I calmly, discreetly remove my T-shirt and dive into the same bush, using my FAVORITE RUNNING TEE to scoop up the massive pile of excrement so the poor groundskeepers don’t have to deal with my Sins. I dump the tee shirt in a garbage can on my way out and skulk home with a new PR and a new life lesson: carry some Wet Ones on long runs.

TLDR: my morning coffee hit me unexpectedly at the beginning of a long run and I had to relieve myself in a nearby bush, afterward I was so anxious and humiliated I PR’ed my 5k