Steve in a Speedo?! Gross!

"Poopy" Run... Yes, It's What You Think...

>> Thursday, February 12, 2026

I left out some details from my last post about my recent long run.

It was the day after the Super Bowl, and I may have consumed the majority of a jar of queso. This is important for later.

My run went well (as I posted about), but I felt a fart brewing that I was afraid I couldn't trust somewhere near the middle of it. It went away quickly. And it came back as I started my cool down with about 2.5 miles to go. That feeling came and went a few times, but I figured I'd make it home.

But then it started getting worse. Now I KNEW I wasn't going to make it. I met a pair of runners and then saw no one else. I rounded a corner (RIGHT next to the house of a family I know from my son's school) and darted across the road into a little over-grown area as my sphincter was losing its battle. I got my shorts down as quick as I could and left a pile in the snow. I was squatted there in the dark as 2 cars went by, but no one could see me (THANK GOD). It was a soft pile, and I didn't have much left on my cheeks - the final mile home was just a little squishy, but not bad. I got in the house and cleaned up right away:

Yes, that's the inside of my shorts as I hit the basement bathroom. NOT CLEAN, but not horrible either.

Easy to spot the UNEXPECTED DETOUR on my Garmin.

Text exchange with my wife later that morning.

I was running yesterday with my cell phone, and at the last moment, I smirked and thought "I wonder if *IT* is still there from 2 days ago..." I ran across the road, and I found my foot prints and a "pile" that had melted its way farther into the snow because of the sun we've had the last few days:

I'm NOT editing this photo to make things any clearer! YOU'RE WELCOME.

Also, notice my feet were facing the road, so I wasn't mooning the cars as they passed. I have SOME dignity. Behind me was a stone wall outside of a fancy country club, so no one saw anything inappropriate.

Oh, and there appears to be fresh dog tracks to the right. Someone's dog got a sniffer full of something unpleasant...

Two "Normal" Hard Runs!

>> Wednesday, February 11, 2026

I've been testing my sore butt. It's been over a month, and I'm at the point of either taking time completely off to let it rest, or pushing it to see how it reacts. It hasn't seemed to be reacting poorly with speed or effort, so I thought I'd try pushing my workouts to be more "normal." And my butt has been handling it well!!

On Monday, I went for a relatively normal long run. It has been a snowy/icy winter so far, so my last "normal" long run was BEFORE THANKSGIVING about 12 weeks ago! (My long runs have been treadmill-bound since then, except for a weird, shorter, loopy long run last week trying to say on "good" sidewalks.) But after some decent temps where the trails melted a bit over the weekend, I headed out on my normal route.

There were icy spots, but nothing too bad. One different thing I did was that I headed down the Greenway for nearly a mile - I was able to mostly find clear spots to stick to there. I hit some bad icy spots near a hill at the turn-around back on River Road, so those were 2 slower splits. But my butt held up and it was a very "normal" long run:

2.5 miles easy, 6 miles harder (including down the
Greenway to the west), and 2.5 miles as a cool-down.

My "harder" miles had a decent descend, with half-mile splits of:

3:19, 3:15, 3:15, 3:08, 3:07, 3:03, 3:11, 3:12, 3:05, 3:08, 3:00, 3:03

= 37:53 (6:18.83/mile pace)

* the back-to-back 3:11 and 3:12 splits were the worst icy spot

In the end, it was 11.11 miles in 1:16:50 (6:54 pace), which was my first run over 10 miles in 5 weeks.

And my hard run on Friday before that was a decent treadill 5K. I purposely didn't look back to the last time I did this workout because I didn't want to push so hard that I'd crash and burn - this was a TEST workout, and I didn't care if it was close to my best time ever. (And the the last time I did this workout, it WAS my best time ever.)

I knew I'd like to break 18:00, so I wanted to start faster than 6:00/mile and try to speed up. So after warming-up for 1 mile, I went straight into 10.3 mph for about a half-mile, 10.5 mph for about another half-mile, 10.6 mph for about a mile, 10.7 mph around 2 miles in, and then I sped up 2 more times to end at 10.9 mph. My half-mile splits for those treadmill 5K looked like this:

2:54, 2:51, 2:49, 2:49, 2:48, 2:45, 0:33 = 17:32

I felt decent at that pace, and my butt was fine. (I mean, a bit tight as usual for the last 5 weeks, but not sore or painful.)

Garmin pace graph for the run.

January in Review: a Small, Injured Month

>> Monday, February 09, 2026

Here's what January looked like in my training log:

• BIKE: 14.28 miles
• TRAINER TIME: 11 hours and 55 mins
• RUN: 65.39 miles
• STRENGTH TIME: 41 hours and 38 mins

None of those are good numbers, mainly because of some random butt tightness that popped up on the 5th and came back with a vengence on the 12th. I skipped some runs and bike workouts on the 14th through the 19th because of that, and then we were in Costa Rica for a week. I also had some failed treadmill intervals on the 9th as well. My strength numbers are a bit smaller because of the trip, but also because I'm not doing some longer leg exercises until my butt heals up a little more.

Last week, I had a decent speed workout to end the week, and I had a NEARLY NORMAL long run this morning. So I'm hoping that February has some bigger numbers in all of those categories above!