“We can dance if we want to…”

I set out a little late for my run last night. I thought it was another 3 miler, but turns out it was 4 miles. You want to know a good motivation for pushing yourself? Start at 8pm and try to do 4 miles before dark. Anyway, I picked a different route than Saturday morning’s 4 miler because I hadn’t done the loop in a while, and I wanted to work in more uphill since half of tomorrow’s 5k is uphill. I finished the first mile in under 11 min, but there was too much uphill to maintain that pace and so the next mile was concentrating on breathing and continuing to run. Shortly after I finished the second mile, and was heading downhill, something bit or stung me. It felt about like a sweat bee, but then I looked down at my calf, and nearly soiled myself at the size of the bug.

Now before I continue, I’m really not a girl about bugs. With the exception of stinging and biting bugs, they are just an annoyance. But when it is big and flies fast and looks like a hornet, I turn into a girl. I didn’t scream, and I don’t think I let the f-bomb fly, but I did the bug dance trying to keep the thing from perching on my calves and either biting or stinging. I kid you not, I think that thing was chasing me. Of course with that “dance” I was doing in the road, I wasn’t running though I got a lot of upper body movement trying to swat at it. This whole act went on for a quarter mile before I finally hit it hard enough to stun it so I could kill it. I had to step on the thing 3 times before it quit moving, too!

With the bug dead, I continued walking and tried to get myself back in the game while pondering whether or not to continue attempting the 4 miles since I had initially abandoned the addition to the loop route to give me 4 miles instead of 3.4. By the time I made it up the hill I had only decided to attempt running again. Well, attempt was all it was because the bug dance tweaked my knee which has been sensitive since last week’s 4.5 miler. But I figured I could go ahead and finish walking 4 miles anyway, and just take a left onto my road and go around the corner and then back to the house. I wasn’t past the first house before another one attacked me, albeit a smaller one. That’s when I dropped the f-bomb and turned towards the house. That bug didn’t follow me either…weirdly.

This is what I think the bug was. Harmless, yes, but still too big to ride on my sweaty calves.

This is to attempt to make up for Safety Dance.

Be glad I didn’t pick the Jagger/Bowie remake…or even the Van Halen remake… 😉

And I am a complete girl over spiders. Size is irrelevant.

11 Responses to '“We can dance if we want to…”'

  1. oh nasty – i might have been the same way though….but I most likely would have dropped the F bomb 🙂

  2. I think the fly was trying to get you to keep running. The bigger the insect the more fascinated I become, so I guess you’d do that if I ran toward you excitedly with one of the big insects I find.

    This past Saturday, I got stung. It was yellow jackets. I rolled over their nest while cutting the grass. I got stung at least three times, no panic, I just calmly left the mower, and backed away slowly.

    I immediately came back (after gathering the proper tools of course) and took care of them. As I told my daughter it’s a good thing I wore shorts, while grass cutting. I’m usually in long pants and a long shirt. If I had been this time, I might not have discovered their home. Since my daughter does occasionally play over there, I told her I’m glad I got stung instead of her. She might not have handled the situation as calmly.

    • DragonLady says:

      If you had the insect, I’d be fine. Or if I came up on a biggun, flying or not, as long as it’s not a stinging one…

      …which brings me to the yellow jackets. I was stung by one of them one time as a I kid after it fell off the back door as I opened it. It fell on me and stung. That was my first “unprovoked” sting. Granted I only got one true provoked sting, which I deserved because I was messing with yellow jackets. I ran over a ground hornet nest with the mower when I was in college at my parents. Before it was over I got stung 3 times, and freaked out a little. My left hand swelled up so bad I couldn’t use it for 3 days. My aunt took care of the nest for me. 🙂

  3. I forgot to say…

    Congrats on the run! I’m always inspired reading about what you’re accomplishing in running. I run, even though it’s not on my top list of things to do, I always found it boring. My daughter loves running, so I continue, and this is a fun way to build up her endurance, since it’s something she loves to do.

  4. Teeni says:

    Yikes. I definitely would have screamed and dropped the F-bomb just on sight of that thing. LOL. You are good to have continued with the run/walk after that. But yeah, on seeing the second one, I would have taken that as a sign that I should get home. Oh, and thanks for making up for the Safety Dance video. I think those two cancel each other out so hopefully I will be okay. Either that or I’ll be alternately humming and whistling both of them later. Too early to tell. 😉

    • DragonLady says:

      hahahaha! I had to do the Safety Dance video because it is just so weird. But really, Dancing in the Street was more appropriate to what I did. 😉

  5. Nicole says:

    Quite right – spiders are evil no matter the size.

Trackbacks/Pingbacks
  1. […] walking downstairs. But it cleared up after a couple of days, and I had no problem with it until the bug dance run. It hasn’t hurt while running since then, but has hurt either soon after or up to a day […]