To pee, or not to pee ... on yourself.

Yes, you read that right.

(My apologies in advance for the vulgar post, but ... well ... it can't be helped.)

So, peeing on yourself is not a debate that you ever EVER thing you're going to have. I mean, pretty much there is your diaper phase, then maybe a set back or two during elementary school for some people (forever to be known as "the kid who peed him/her self when we were little"and then maybe there's that guy, yeah, you know the one, from college, who challenges some other guy to some bizarre-o drinking contest and secretly wears a Depends to give himself an edge (okay, maybe you don't know this guy, thank goodness, but I s%*t you not, I have heard stories...)

The point is ... you just don't think that you, as an adult, are ever going to consider for a second that it might somehow be acceptable for you to do it.

And, I'm not talking about the times when maybe you've had a leetle too much to drink and are en route to someplace else and you reallyreallyreallyreally have to go so you duck into an alley or behind a bush or something. I'm talking full on, broad daylight, in public view. You just can't imagine it.

Even when you read an article by the Sports Guy about how the Sports Gal did it when she ran the Boston Marathon and didn't want to sacrifice her time and figured it was mostly water anyway (sadly, I don't seem to be able to get to that magical article anymore ... only "ESPN Insiders" have access.), you still think to yourself, "that will never be me."

But then, there you are. Running a (half) marathon in Nashville over the weekend, and you're so NO WHERE NEAR the front (as in thousands of people from the front in fact) and you're not even running the whole marathon so it isn't like you need to worry about qualifying for the Boston Marathon, which you wouldn't be remotely close to doing anyway if you were running the full marathon, but. You have to pee.

And it is ANNOYINK. Because you only drank eleventy hundred glasses the day before the race because you are supposed to, to avoid dehydration and cramping and whatnot. And you went to the bathroom at home, before you left, just like you're supposed to (even if you're not running a race) and then

AS SOON AS you got to the race site you got in the ridonkulously looooong port-a-john lines because they never have enough of them and because, yes, you ALREADY have to go again. But you get through the line, thankfully in time to still make the start of the race.

And then the race starts, and almost immediately you need to pee AGAIN. But you think, there is NO WAY I'm stopping, because the race just started and even though they actually do have sets of additional port-o-johns along the route, there are still lines at them for the first 6 or 7 miles and you are definitely NOT waiting in a line during the race. And, seriously, you'll start to use up all that excess water the longer you run, right?

But no. You still have to pee at mile 7 and it's getting worse and you're getting kind of thirsty, but you just don't see how it is going to work to have more liquid and even though you are NO WHERE NEAR the front, etc., you are somewhat running at your target pace and you think ... for much longer than you'd like to admit ... you think about it.

About peeing on yourself.

About how you're not sure why it sounded so gross when you read about the Sports Gal doing it, because, seriously, she has a point, it is pretty much all water anyway. And who's really paying attention to you in the midst of all those other runners, and you're not from Nashville anyway so who will you really see again, and they do give you that foil blanket thingie at the end that you can wrap yourself up in and use as a barrier to protect the car of whichever friend is nice enough to pick you up and take you home...

GAH. Unbelievable.

For the record...I did not pee on myself. I finally broke down and used the port-a-john just before mile 10. I won't lie ... it was a close call. But in the end I just couldn't.

And I don't even think about "what if I had gotten a time that was 30-90 seconds faster?"

Or about the fact that instead of coming in eleventy thousand, four hundred and thirty sixth, I would have come in eleventy thousand, two hundred and thirty sixth.

Nope, not at all