How an Embarrassing Race Led Me to My Future
By: Carrie Killian
Tags: Runners, Racing, Love, Running, Life Lessons

How an Embarrassing Race Led Me to My Future

If those bathroom walls could talk.

It’s 6 am, and I awoke to a very full and bloated stomach. I had to race in two hours — this isn’t good.

If you have ever raced, you know that the best way to wake up is with a hungry tummy. Before my feet hit the floor, my stomach was pleading, please kill me. But I had a ten-mile race to run, and run it I was.

On the way to the race, I stopped by a local gas station for my go-to banana and yogurt. I knew I was in trouble but thought the magical healing powers of my usual pre-race breakfast could strike a peace treaty with whatever the hell was happening in my stomach. I texted my friends, this isn’t going to end well. I slowly went to the starting line hoping for a miracle.

The race was in Stillwater, Minnesota. My then-husband and I had come to Minnesota for the weekend to look at homes with a local Realtor. At the time, we were temporarily living in Iowa. We had a child the year before and decided to make Stillwater our permanent home. I fell in love with the small river town years earlier. My dream was to live in Stillwater.

At the start of the ten-mile race, I felt good. I got this. Then around mile four, things got real. My stomach was starting to clench. I told myself all will be fine; I can wait until a bathroom stop. All smart races have bathrooms, except for this race. This was a ten-mile race that provided no restrooms, no porta-potties. Nothing.

By mile seven, I was on the border of dangerous territory. So I veered off the route, ran down a dirt road, hunched into a farm field, and cursed the race directors.

I finished in 1 hour and 19 minutes. Not too shabby for wanting death for most of the race. Once we ate our breakfast, it was time to meet our Realtor to start looking at homes. Everything was going well, but after the second home, my body was ready for retaliation — vengeance for making it run ten miles after eating rare steak kabobs for dinner the night before. Repayment was on its way.

On our way to the third home, I was starting to heavily perspire, feeling more nauseous by the second. I saw a neighborhood cafe and ordered my husband to pull over. Before he could come to a complete stop, I was out of the car, making a beeline to the cafe. I yelled out to him to see the next home without me.

I almost made it to the front door, but my stomach mistook the sidewalk for a bathroom and gave a sudden lurch. I bolted down, praying to God to let me take 20 more steps to use indoor plumbing like a human being. I would give anything, my firstborn, my future second-born, my dog, anything to not crap myself in front of a local establishment in the town where I desperately wanted to live.

I was squatting on the concrete in front of the door with my head between my knees. I must have looked like a crazy woman. Or a transient.

Thankfully, I made it to the bathroom — that poor bastard of a room. Relieved but terribly ashamed, I ran out of that notably cute little cafe as fast as I could, hoping no one would see me. Or worse, someone would use the restroom and come after me with a mob full of pitchforks and torches.

I told myself what everyone tells themselves after an embarrassing episode in public: I would never meet any of those people in that cafe again.

Oh, God is funny.

After living in Stillwater for a few years, I started regularly going to that cafe. Even during my notorious purge, I remembered it as having a warm ambiance. I knew I was returning to the scene of the crime, but I figured enough time had passed, and the cafe had forgiven me. I am sure worse things happened in that bathroom since. Hopefully. Maybe? Plus, they had fantastic pumpkin bars that no amount of shame could keep me from.

Then I met the owner of the cafe. He was tall, charming, and witty. I was screwed. Some days, I would come in just to talk to him. What pumpkin bars? What bathroom?

The owner and I became friends, eventually dated, and fell in love. We now live blocks from that cafe. I giggle to myself every time I use that restroom. If those walls could talk.

Life is funny that way. One of the worst races I ran became an embarrassing moment that turned into the meeting place of the love of my life.

You never know where a race can take you.