The Sexiness of Trail Running
With a side of hot sauce.
When it comes to sexiness, I want to be the Frank’s Red Hot on my boyfriend’s egg-white omelet. Although this is a very intuitive goal, achieving it is not quite so natural for me. All too often, I find myself being more of a run-of-the-mill sort of condiment, like salt. For example, sometimes I'll come home from work thinking, “Be hot. Be spicy. Be the most delicious item on his plate.” Then I will see the Sudoku puzzle from that day’s Bozeman Daily Chronicle. The puzzle is four-star difficult and I will think to myself, “One, one, one. Two, two, two.” Then I will pick up a pen and after about 10 to 15 minutes, I will turn to my boyfriend, who will probably be reading a manly magazine like Fine Gardener, Wood Carving for Men with Huge Tools, or Cat Fancy, and I will say to him, “Honey, I am four stars smart!” beaming like a proud kindergartener. Without even looking up, he will reply, “Yup.” The tone of his voice in that one word will remind me that I lost track of my hot-sauce goal.
But my number-puzzle ADHD does not totally squash my spice-girl fantasies. Admittedly, if you lined me up with 10 other random women of similar age and asked men off the street which of us is the hottest, I might get picked three percent of the time. If you asked a group of arbitrary women to choose who was most in need of a make-over, I would probably be selected at least 90 percent of the time.
But if you gave me and those nine other fabulous females a quiz about our feelings toward our bodies, I am pretty certain I would have a good shot at feeling the sexiest. This would shock the nine random, imaginary women who stood along side me in my imaginary line. They would wonder, “How could someone with size eleven-and-a-half feet, frizzy hair, and a rear that appears to be a regular hiding place for members of the witness relocation program feel so good about herself?”
And as they pondered this paradox, I would employ my ability to mind-read my make-believe friends and I would declare, “Trail Running!” This answer would surprise most people. You see, we females are brainwashed, from approximately the time of conception, to believe that looking like Rachel McAdams is the key to inner peace. I have discovered, through acquiring inner peace without the exterior hotness, that this is a big, fat lie.
Trail running is a major contributor to my happiness and self-confidence. Gigantic feet seem sexier when they take me to the tops of mountains. A large rump becomes “strong glutes." My obsession with food becomes an educational opportunity to focus on pre-race, post-race, training-day, and rest-day fuel. I am convinced that a good scramble from Nova Café makes me run faster, endure longer, and have better balance, especially while looking over a ridge at the top of one of our local mountains. And if I am going to adventure in places where I look down on raptors in flight, a Nova scramble between two slices of pizza is even better for energy reserves. Quite a bit of food is required for the calories to reach the ends of my long toes.
Upon my return from trail run experiences, my boyfriend puts down his manly magazines and asks, “Are you feeling the love?” And the answer is consistently “YES!” I am also feeling hungry, creative, joyful, and impatient for a shower. Showers, by the way, put way more Frank’s Red Hot on my man's omelet than being four-stars smart.
