Steak tartar and other International Delights

At one point in my life I was stupid enough to run a marathon.  The running of the marathon is not the hard part, it’s the training.  The training chart in Runner’s World looks so easy with all these rest and cross training days.  My goodness was I ever going to have to really run?  It was deceptive (as most good plans are) and took the miles up so slowly that seven would turn into seventeen in the time it took Britney’s latest song to fall off the charts. 

Something else deceptive about the whole running underworld, is clothing.  Apparently when one runs more than a couple miles, certain things can happen due to friction.  I had no idea men’s nipples could bleed.  I’m sure it is massively painful, but whenever I would see one of those poor souls with the bloodied boobies, I snickered.  "Hehe – you’re a dumbass.  Buy some band-aids".  When I showed up in Okinawa the only athletic clothes I had were for tennis.  They did fine for a while, but eventually I just needed more to keep from doing wash every other day.  I went to the main store, where they had no running shorts.  I bought basketball shorts instead.  They had the same general shape as running shorts and they were on sale which is always a motivator in any of my clothing purchases. 

I prefer to run outside by myself.  It is better that way.  When I am in the gym I get all nervous that people are looking at my pace and calling me out for being the weaksauce that I am…so I tap it up a notch or two…because that’s a game changer for the rubberneckers.  Treadmills also hurt and don’t do hills very well.  Sometimes, like when it is over 100 degrees, rainy or the middle of the night, it just isn’t practical to run outside...then treadmills rock! 

It just so happened that the day I got my kick ass retro Nike basketball short shorts was one of those days that the treadmill was made for.  In I went with my free-with-purchase headphones to plug into the tv wall.  Awesome – Oprah was on.  This was going to be cake!  Up I climb – eager to knock out this midweek fiver.  No prob.  Oh, wait, maybe a problem.  My inner thigh is killing me.  Ridiculous!  I am like a mile down - no way I can have any pain!  Run through the pain little girl – run!  Oh crap – totally not letting up.  My hand instinctually reaches down to the affected area and comes back up bloody!  No kidding. Bloody.  Not how I saw this episode of Oprah going.  So there I am in the front of the gym on my rat wheel in stunned stupidity with a bloody hand between my bloody thighs, I am fully leaned over with my face roughly at the level of my cool new shorts trying to figure out where I am bleeding from.  Turns out the seams on really cute retro basketball shorts are not as friction friendly as on running shorts. The treadmill next to me stops.  Great.  So much for keeping a low profile and suffering in anonymity.  I was just waiting for the dude to start pointing, and say, “hehe, you’re a dumb ass – buy some Band-Aids.”  Which I guess is preferable to him thinking that Aunt FLow had arrived in town and was beatting the shit out of me, "hehe, you're a dumbass - buy some tampax"

Through this random series of events, I come to learn there is a sports shop attached to the gym and that they sell running shorts.  One of those lemons/lemonade things I guess.  Swollen and bloody (dead sexy I know), off I limp.  The clerk greets me in her heavy Japanese accent.  I politely inform her I am looking for shorts that don’t do this - as I expose my raw thigh.  Immediately she says, “SHOWTS NOT PWOBWEM.  MEATY INNA THIGH PWOBWEM." She was yelling at me.  Was she going to send me to clothing detention?  Surely she picked up my shock at this frankness and continued, “my dotta.  She have same pwobwem.  She wear holes in pants wight here” indicating right where my lower love handles are.  In the back of my head I am thinking…”yeah, that happens to me too”, but still I am unable to make words come out of my mouth. 

I left with a pair of shorts that didn’t turn me into steak tartar.  I bought a second pair of real running shorts for the race.  I had to get them out in town.  The only size that fit was a men’s large.  Ok, a Japanese men’s large, but a men’s large nonetheless.  It was the only set of bottoms I bought on the Japanese economy the entire three and a half years I lived there.  Last week I picked up a pair of running shorts in America.  I bought an XS.  A ladies XS. 

You guessed it.  The smaller top pair is the men’s large.  I would say I am more a small sort of gal than an extra small, yet these shorts fit nicely.

Here is a photo of me wearing my new shorts.  It has that decapitated Barbie Doll look…without me being a Barbie doll or decapitated.

I have this theory that as America fattens up, the clothing companies make folks feel better by making the sizes bigger.  “I know I weigh 40 pounds more, but I am only one size up from college.”  I think the cure for this would be Japanese-American sales clerks and Japanese-sized clothes.