It started pleasantly enough.  A few moments later though it was not a discussion of stride mechanics, shoe types or hydration rather it was a through inquisition of my training and recent races.  “You’re not running hard” she insinuated.  She was right I was building distance and not pace for the past 12 weeks.  “When was the last time you did any real speed work?”  she asked very directly.   I had no clue, maybe a year and then it was only 3 or 4 times so I could start skating hard.   When was the last time you actually ran a race series for time not for fun?  Never I told her which was in part a lie. I’d run races for time but rarely a complete series because I often had the kids along on the shorter distance.    As she started into the program and it’s philosophies she asked if I had any questions.  Other than if I should have a safe word and expect visits from Pukey the Clown came to mind but both of which I kept to myself. Instead my question was simple.  If I went through the testing they would then tell me how fast and how far to run every day for the next three months.  Correct?   “Yes” she stated and I was fine with that, it is what I was paying for.    Usually I’m a control freak but on this topic I want it all laid out for me.  I’ll follow it to the letter and drive like hell or let death finally win along the way should the bitch goddess of cardio vascular salvation decide to betray me.

Then my new coach started talking about my expected race times…that’s when I regretted not asking about a safe word.   Oh well if it works and I hit the pace in question it will all be worth it.   It’s just kind of weird that I went from having hulking violent male coaches and instructors push me beyond my physical limits for years and traded them all in for a petite woman in tights who wants me to shave 15 minutes off my time which sounds far more challenging than anything anyone has ever asked me to do before.  The good news is its all underway and the pieces are falling into place so next up the back cracker (which until now I’ve had in the same category as a shrink), orthopedist (who knows me and knows I’m off kilter), PT assessment (flexibility, what flexibility?…I’ve never met a yoga instructor who I couldn’t make cry) and finally the dietician who as long as she doesn’t fuck with my coffee we’ll get along fine.

Slutty Nurse

I arrive at the office 15 minutes early and Lacey checks me in.  Lacey is not a nick name I’ve given the petite raven haired beauty in billing it is in fact the name on her name tag.  A few minutes later a short chesty blond gleefully pops out through the door and calls my name.  As I bound toward her the truly injured, old, and pain filled look at me with disdain.  Fuck’em I have enough issues lurking beneath the surface so I feel no guilt. They can wait the world is run by the strong and aggressive.

Nurse : “You brought your own shorts, what don’t you like our one size fits come people blue paper ones”

Me: “No I’m far too stylish for those. Besides I’d never live it down next time I see Doc at a race”

A few minutes later after changing the door opens

Doc: “I see you’re not wearing the brace so after you tell me how it feels tell me what you’ve really been doing on it.”

Me : “it’s fine other than I’m old. I’ve not done a run longer than 6 miles but it’s held up well.”

Doc : “How much are you squatting?”

Me: “315 for sets of 15. Why does that matter?”

Doc: “Because most people with knee pain occasionally follow the instructions, One look at your legs and I know you were doing more than I told you to. What else have you done?”

Me: “elliptical 3 times a week for between 60 and 90 minutes a session like you said, and I did add a full dry land conditioning workout last Sunday”

Doc “Outside in the snow?”

Me: “no in my living room. Of course outside in the snow”

Doc: “how did that go?”

Me: “ Good except my thighs were burning from the lame ass rehab program I’ve been following”

Doc: “Let me guess you weren’t wearing the brace.  ummm nice. You booked your ski trip didn’t you?”

Me “I told the boys I was going but wasn’t planning on buying the tickets of booking my room until after we talked”

Doc: “like that mattered. You need to stretch more.”

Me: “I’ve thought of hiring a trainer to stretch me a few times a week”

Doc:  “only you, most people would just stretch a little more or take a yoga class”

Me: “I do yoga”

Doc:  “ You don’t do enough. Your Flexibility still sucks.  Find an instructor you like or think is SEXY so you’ll  actually go to class”

Me: “Chicks dig Flexibility! ”

Doc: “Bye Mal. I’ve got patients who will actually take my advice to see”

The Chesty Nurse returns a few minutes later laughing “He said you probably won’t look at these but Doc ask me to print them out for you anyhow”  She held a stack of papers that listed Yoga Studios, a few personal trainers at my club, and then a killer core conditioning routine. Look out AB routines from hell here I come…assuming I don’t die doing some weird inverted pose meant for anorexics, petite models, and Zen filled vegetarians or hit a tree while skiing.

I’ve decided to finally seek professional help. Yes I’ve been absent more often than not and can’t seem to string together enough words to tell an amusing story. Sure I’m still involved in things many people think I need help with including fueling my entire perverted existence with caffeine, loud music, rough sex and the occasional good night’s sleep. Sure my vocabulary is still questionable at best and rarely can I maintain my full out Zen mode which means I retreat to being an aggressive jerk. All that aside it’s not the type of professional help you might be thinking or the type I more than likely need but its professional help none the less…well maybe. So here we go!

Recently somewhere in the middle of my completely fucked up and chaotic life I had an Epiphany of sorts…or was her name Charity or wait a second I think it was Katie…anyhow. Somewhere between the Belgium accents and pissed off Germans who call me in the middle of the fucking night added to the Aussies who don’t realize there are only a handful of things I’m good at after 9 pm my time and none of them are by and large anything that would relate to business or be considered productive to society as a whole I came to the conclusion that I need to start doing things I enjoy again, running being one of them. Maybe I should put an after hours voice mail on the cell.

“Hi you’ve reached Malflic and its fucking late. Odds are I’m sleeping, drinking, fucking or involved in some other fun but completely deviant activity. Please leave your name and number and I’ll gladly call you back when I put the flogger, cane, or ball gag down”

While I readily admit to being a sadist on a lot of levels there are those hidden qualities that border on other things like masochism. No I’m not going all switch on anyone but the fact remains I’ve been living with and running on a sore foot for more than a year. I’d rather suffer than see a doctor…it’s not a pride thing, it’s not a get off on the pain thing. Maybe its stupidity but I say it’s because I’m intolerant of the medical world’s BS.

BTW If you do get off on the pain of plantar facetious I think you need more help than any podiatrist can offer and I’m not even sure if that’s really an official kink by anyone’s standards. I’ve been around the block shattered a few pure souls and all pain is not the same so spare me that argument. So finally as I decide to sign up for a summer race series and a fall half marathon in addition to new shoes there’s the need to finally get the damn foot looked at.

In my world there are things I do myself and always will. I don’t trust anyone to book my travel for instance. Not my admin, not the Chesty Blonde, Not God or the Devil – No one, no exceptions. And there are things I try never to do…order Pizza over the phone (apparently I have an accent no one who works in a Pizza shop can understand), order at the drive through window of a fast food place if I’m not the one eating (too many special orders. I have neither the desire not the capacity to keep them all straight) or schedule doctor visits.

I ask the Blonde to call and set me up. She offers me the phone number citing my every changing schedule. I suggest I’ll have my admin call – she tells me “that’s stupid and selfish do it your self”

So standing in the kitchen one morning I call at 8:00 am – they don’t open until 9 I bitch about it. She tells me I’m impatient. I call back at 9 and get an automated attendant which is nothing more than a machine that reads me 6 options none of which apply to me and I hit 0 for operator. The fucking thing hangs up on me. I go into a tirade and then call back. The Blonde looks mystified at me. She knows the man she lives with and the prick I am in my professional life are two very different people, its rare she sees that prick type but she begins to get the idea and a refresher.

I call back and choose the “I want to pay my bill” option. I know damn well that if nothing else folks want to get paid and it’s my best chance to get a live person. A live person who then gives me a different number to call to schedule an appointment. Proceed to tell him his phone system sucks and its bullshit I have to call a different number. He hangs up on me and I call scheduling, they put me on hold and never pick back up. I decide fuck it. And call from three more phones since I’m pissed in an attempt to ties up most of their lines. I put them all on speaker and wait…and wait…and wait. In the mean time I look up the Doc’s resume on line…oh he went to Harvard! Big fucking deal Hammer’s dad taught at MIT for decades, I got in to Columbia and fucked more future doctors than Bill Clinton did Arkansas trail park whores (though it might be close).

That’s when part two of the Epiphany hit…Fuck it. I call Corporate big shots , Lawyers and CEO’s every god damn day. All of whom know me and they either answer the phone or have someone who does without putting me on hold for 12 minutes.

I decide to be my own God put on my running shoes and head out the door. At mile 2.25 I run by a medical complex and spot three different foot and ankle specialists. Fuck Mr. IV league he can lick my balls. I can hobble in, in person to one of these other docs on the route back one day if need be.

So two weeks later with race forms submitted and the diet and training program started in earnest I’ve still not seen a doctor. “someday ignoring something will kill you” on friend warns, another bitches at me about not using my health insurance enough and that I should be grateful for it. I spare her the fact that if you factor in my kids and how often they get sick or just go to the doctor there’s no one in the health insurance industry making money on me. We’re at the pediatrician nearly weekly…mainly because the Blonde books those appointments.

Me one day not going will kill me but at least it won’t be of a heart attack from being pissed off while holding to schedule and appointment.

I give you this. There is not a good Fetish shop in this town, if there is dime me in since I’ve been here 4 years and can usually find one in any city in the first 30 minutes.  So far no such luck and trust me it’s not for lack of trying.  Gay men may have Gaydar but I seemed to have a highly developed sense of Kinkdar.  No kink shops here thank you very much, and the Pizza sucks, damn puritans.

But while out the other night in a shop that caters to my completely obsessive new fetish that includes “specialty” shoes and body lube the nice girl asks me as I stare mindlessly at their wares.

“Do you have enough rubber underwear?” The pretty, rail thin little blonde asked again since I didn’t answer the first time.  This is the same girl that few months back was obsessing perhaps unhealthily over my feet more than an old lover with a foot thing ever did.  I was quite concerned at the time. But somehow I got over it.

Now I’ve been asked about a lot of things by women I don’t really know but about owning rubber underwear until that point hadn’t been one of them.  I love Latex, but not me in latex. Women in latex very sexy, me in latex well, not so much so.

I stare back at her ” I don’t think so” knowing damn well I didn’t own any for any purpose.  There are a lot of things I don’t own leather pants for example are for rock stars and gay bikers for example.  OK I’ll give you hunters if you are referring to brush pants.

She points out that they have both boxers and briefs that were obviously in plain sight somewhere in my soul I’m grateful she didn’t point out a thing option. Perhaps she assumed looking at me that I was blind or at least visually impaired from some acquired illness or jerking off incessantly.   I must have had that diseased masturbator look about me for a few moments there.

“Keep in mind they run a little small” She added then showing me the ones that were only rubberized in the dead center portion of ones nether region and how the rest was “comfortable lycra”.   I picked up what I came for body lube to keep from chaffing as I sweat and decided to pass on the new additions to my wardrobe.  When it gets colder out I’ll worry about freezing my balls off and getting frost bite on my member but not quite yet.

Great running shop and based on how lame this town is it is the first place I’d been to that sold anything rubber that was wearable by anything other than my car.  But still it’s not the same without them selling baby powder to put it on with and black beauty to make it shine.

The next morning arrives and as I head out into the 27 degree weather and I start with the body lube, it’s cold out and personally I can’t stand chaffed nipple so going from north to south I end with the arches of my feet and then head out to find an assortment of people in everything from short shots and teensy weensy tops to people bundled up for an artic expedition.

Now I’ve always been one for edgy phrases of bold declarations like, leather daddy, it’s only kinky the first time, or my personal favorite “Rope Slut”.  Most were in tights, the men included even though it was not the ballet or Peter Pan but my favorite was watching 4 lithe little numbers pouring out of a car that on the back window that had written across it “FAST GIRLS HAVE GOOD TIMES”.

In a fashion that is true to myself I found a position near the front and conversed demurely with the “fast girls” as they contorted themselves into a variety of positions fit for the karma sutra if it was published by Nike.  Scantily clad they stood there apparently so thin that their bodies had become immune to climatic changes and freezing weather.

Then it happened the gun went off, the mad dash began and once again I failed to keep up with the fast girls, ahh the story of my fucking life.  I could always get a fast girl but I could never really keep up with her after a while and away she went off into the distance with me still chasing after her ass, in this case quite literally.  Why should running be any different?

For more than a few minutes I watched and tried like hell as they pulled away from me more and more with each quick bounding stride.  And that’s when it hit me the girl in the store was not trying to sell me rubber pants to keep my Willy from freezing this winter because she cared.  It was because with a single glance and few words she had me pegged as slow.  Bitch!  Moral of the story never trust fast girls.