Quick quiz

This month, the folks at Runner’s World ramped up their effort to appeal to the Teen People reader demographic by including a multiple-choice personality quiz. (Really. See page 54.) So, taking a cue from the longstanding leader in running journalism, I too have developed a little quizzy quiz in hopes of drawing interest from some of the younger members of the running community. But don’t worry, even if you’ve never heard of Selena Gomez, I’m pretty sure you’ll find my questionnaire both entertaining and insightful.

What kind of runner are you?

1.) It’s Friday night, and your best friend is having a barbecue at the mansion she is housesitting while her rich neighbors are on vacation in Bora Bora. It has a pool—with a slide! You really want to go, but you have a 10K road race in the morning. What do you do?

(a) Respectfully decline her invitation. You know you’ll lose your racing focus if you are distracted by loud music, water polo and fruity cocktails.
(b) Go to the party for exactly one hour, limiting yourself to exactly one piña colada. Then return home in time to lay out your racing gear and go through your ritual visualization exercise.
(c) Pool? Water slide? Shirtless dudes? Screw the race—it’s time to par-tay!

2.) You are four intervals into a 10 x 400-meters workout. It’s 90 degrees on the track and you feel like your heart is pumping hot molten lava through your veins. If you attempt to finish the workout, you will probably either collapse or spontaneously combust. What do you do?

(a) Buck up and finish anyway. You always follow through on your workout plans, come hail or high water.
(b) Complete one more lap and then finish with a one-mile tempo run straight to the city pool, where you jump in fully clothed and drenched in sweat, scaring dozens of small children.
(c) Call it good and head to DQ for a lemon-lime Misty Freeze.

3.) One of your old high school cross country teammates is coming through town on her way to a Nickelback concert in Seattle. She leaves you a voicemail wondering if you would like to take her on a run while she’s there. You are training for a seven-mile trail race at the end of the month, and you were planning to do hill repeats this afternoon. What do you do?

(a) Make up an excuse and blow her off. She’s slow, and Nickelback is a terrible band anyway.
(b) Do a short hill workout in the morning and then take her on a leisurely jog along the river.
(c) Save the hills for tomorrow and take your friend on a “run” from bar to bar.

4.) It’s race day! What are you wearing?

(a) Bright green singlet (tech fabric, of course), matching green racing flats, black spandex shorts (for muscle compression and aerodynamic efficiency), arm warmers, hundred-dollar sport sunglasses, GU/water belt. Let’s. Do. This.
(b) Your favorite pair of Nike running shorts (which you scored for 12 bucks at the Sports Authority sidewalk sale last year), a black tank top and your Asics trainers.
(c) Basketball shorts, an old cut-off t-shirt and your cross-trainers from ninth-grade P.E.

5.) What would you do for a Klondike Bar?

(a) Nothing. I would never poison my body with a frozen chunk of sugar and saturated fat.
(b) Beg, borrow and/or steal.
(c) I don’t know, but once I got it, I would trade it in for an Otter Pop—the unquestionable king of summertime treats.


Scoring:

Mostly a’s – The Dashing D-Bag
You won’t let anyone or anything get in the way of your obsessive running habit. You are willing to trade your relationships, social life and personal reputation for training and racing success. Unless you want to end up alone, unhappy and/or in a loony bin, you need to seriously rethink your priorities. Wake up and smell the Klondikes!

Mostly b’s – The Middle-of-the-Road-Runner
You’re serious about running, and you enjoy being successful at it. You also realize that there are other enjoyable aspects of a healthy, balanced life—like piña coladas and social interaction.

Mostly c’s – The Shuffling Slacker
You’ll go for a run if it fits into your busy social calendar, but it’s definitely not at the top of your to-do list. Which is fine—although you might want to go easy on the beer and Otter Pops.

Buyer's remorse

If you’ve ever been shopping in a supermarket, I know you’ve made at least one impulse purchase in your lifetime. My usual weaknesses generally fall under one of two categories: chocolate and Cosmopolitan Magazine.

This weekend, however, I expanded my repertoire of rash commercial transactions. On Saturday morning, I impulse-bought 10 kilometers.

Actually, to be more accurate, I impulsively agreed to register for a Saturday morning 10K race while (slightly) under the influence of a Friday evening microbrew.

As you might recall, I have never raced a 10K. In fact, six miles is on the far-right side of my normal training distance bell curve. One might even consider it an “outlier.” (That one was for my high school Algebra II teacher, who always insisted that math would eventually come in handy in my everyday life. It took eight years, but there you go, Mr. Hammond.)

What made my decision all the more surprising (and stupid) was the fact that I was fully aware of what this particular 10K race entailed: a roughly one-mile climb up a mountain trail just minutes into the race.

I know that many runners wouldn’t bat an eye at such a course. But I am not ashamed to admit that I am not that hard core. I don’t like dirt. I’m not a fan of rocks. And mile-long hills? Not really my style.

Remember, I’m an 800 runner. (Sorry…a retired 800 runner. I’d probably have to be a few microbrews in the hole before I’d agree to run one of those again.) The point is that I am naturally drawn to flat, hard, predictable running surfaces. Cement, asphalt and rubber are some of my all-time favorites.

Suffice is to say that Saturday’s race pushed the boundaries of my comfort zone. I showed up hoping to see at least one—just one—person at the starting line that I knew, for a fact, I could beat. But unlike my last racing endeavor, there were no old men in kilts, no middle-aged women in sparkly green tutus.

My heart pounded, and I started to feel a terrible twisting sensation in the pit of my stomach as panic set in. Suddenly, I felt athletically inferior to every Vibram-shod, GU-carrying, tech-fabric-wearing competitor in my immediate vicinity. That included the nine-year-old kid in the Transformers t-shirt and the eighty-year-old man in denim cutoffs.

I hung out near the front of the pack at the starting line, careful to allow any runners wearing singlets and/or racing flats to get ahead of me. I knew those people meant business, and I did not want to be the defenseless target of mid-race F-bombs when they had to go off-roading to pass me on the single-track trail.

I started out conservatively. My plan was to treat the mountain climb as an extended warm-up. You know, the kind of warm-up where you traverse several steep switchbacks while testing the structural integrity of your Achilles tendons.

Well, that plan fell apart about halfway up the incline, when I was forced to choose between walking and rupturing a calf muscle. During my walk period(s), I came up with a new plan that involved sucking it up and finishing while maintaining a safe and prudent pace.

On my way down the hill (and by hill, I mean nearly vertical and borderline-unnavigable mountain face) I made a quick assessment of whether I had a realistic shot at a come-from-behind victory.

In the distance, I could barely make out the form of a runner sporting a pink tank top and a bobbing ponytail. Using the basic rules of logic, I narrowed the possibilities down to two scenarios: I was either getting my butt kicked by some kind of badass-renegade runner lady or a dude who was incredibly comfortable with his sexuality.

I crossed the finish line and limped to the end of the chute, where I handed my tag to a race volunteer. (At least, I’m pretty sure I did. Apparently there was no record of me finishing, although I’m pretty sure the unrelenting pain in my back, thighs, glutes and feet provides sufficient proof that I did not imagine the whole thing.)

Then I sat down. Once my legs had stopped twitching involuntarily, I started stretching and massaging my calves. Even though the race had been, for the most part, pure hell, I was glad I made myself do it.

I finished (or at least I'm claiming to have finished) third overall for women, which according to my calculations, makes me 1/3 badass-renegade. (There you go, kids. Another practical application for math.)