December 2, 2012

CIM 2012: The Ugly

Surely you've heard of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (the finest of *all* Spaghetti Westerns?)

If not, watch it somehow, STAT.  Either way, I reference it here because it's a hilarious time capsule of culture, was one of my father's favorite movies, and, most importantly, because it's a great set of words to summarize an event.

I've decided to take them in reverse order. So, without further adieu:

The Ugly (the back of my right knee, post race):


Chafing --If you do research on running in severe raining conditions, you will find quite a bit of information on chafing.  Apparently, tons of water from the sky for hours makes the friction for your skin against itself and material much, much more likely to cause abrasion.  The reports I read were so scary that I bought a BodyGlide stick for the first time ever and applied it *quite* liberally to any place I'd ever had chafing on any run in the past.  Also, I cheated on my favorite socks and bought drymax socks.

End result?  My feet were pruned and purple, but not a blister to be found. All the normal places where I have had any chafing issues in the past were fine -- BodyGlide is powerful stuff.  I think next time I'm just going to go for a full body application, though.

Because despite running in the exact same tights I wore on my last long run I had tons of unexpected areas of redness and raw skin where the seams must have just swollen in the water, or the material expanded in the water and stuck to the creases of my skin, or who knows what.  Either way, it was gross, and not fun.  The knee above is the least of it, in terms of actual open wounds I'm nursing, but the rest is NSFW.  This pain kicked in around 10 miles or so and continued throughout the remainder of the race.  Like I said, Ugly.

The Bad and The Good are to come.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh wow. And I thought my armpit chafing was bad, but at least I didn't feel it until after I finished. I had read about unpleasant capri-related chafing. Sounds like the worst! I hope it heals soon!

Biting Tongue said...

Dude. Capri-related chafing is officially, the worst non-musculoskeletal injury I've ever had from running.

If I could do one thing over it would be to opt for the shorts I packed and opted out of...

In other news, like you, my arms were red, but not raw, thanks to the liberal application of bodyglide.

Arvay said...

I admire your dedication! I will take a run in -40 over a run in the rain, and so will my dogs!