Quite a few of the episodes here on What Was That Like involve emergencies. Today we’re talking about a different kind of emergency.
If you’re new to the podcast, this is definitely not a typical episode. You might want to look through some of the past episode titles and pick one out that looks interesting.
But today is a little different. I’m in Dallas this week, hanging out with a bunch of my podcasting friends, so for this episode we’re kind of taking a break from the normal interview format.
A little bit of background. About 10 years ago, I was creating and hosting a different podcast. It was called Ultrafinishers. Each episode, I would interview a runner who had just finished their first ultramarathon. An ultramarathon is any race longer than a marathon, which is 26.2 miles. So an ultra usually ranges from 50k, which is a little more than 30 miles, up to 100 miles. Some are even longer than that.
But for one of those episodes, I asked people to call in and tell their story of the nightmare that just about every runner has had to deal with – you’re out on a run, and you have to poop, and there’s no bathroom in sight. It’s not a fun thing when it’s happening – but as it turns out, it’s pretty entertaining to hear about when it happens to other people.
So you’re about to hear a bunch of my ultra running friends from 10 years ago, telling their poop stories. And all of these were called in on a phone line, so the audio quality is not quite what you’d expect on a modern podcast. But it’s listenable.
And don’t worry – I have lots of crazy What Was That Like stories in the pipeline, and I’m looking forward to bringing those to you in the near future.
Graphics for this episode by Bob Bretz. Transcription was done by James Lai.
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Episode transcript (download transcript PDF):
Quite a few of the episodes here on What Was That Like involve emergencies. Today we’re talking about a different kind of emergency.
If you’re new to the podcast, this is definitely not a typical episode. You might want to look through some of the past episode titles and pick one out that looks interesting.
But today is a little different. I’m in Dallas this week, hanging out with a bunch of my podcasting friends, so for this episode we’re kind of taking a break from the normal interview format.
A little bit of background. About 10 years ago, I was creating and hosting a different podcast. It was called Ultrafinishers. Each episode, I would interview a runner who had just finished their first ultramarathon. An ultramarathon is any race longer than a marathon, which is 26.2 miles. So an ultra usually ranges from 50k, which is a little more than 30 miles, up to 100 miles. Some are even longer than that.
But for one of those episodes, I asked people to call in and tell their story of the nightmare that just about every runner has had to deal with – you’re out on a run, and you have to poop, and there’s no bathroom in sight. It’s not a fun thing when it’s happening – but as it turns out, it’s pretty entertaining to hear about when it happens to other people.
So you’re about to hear a bunch of my ultra running friends from 10 years ago, telling their poop stories. And all of these were called in on a phone line, so the audio quality is not quite what you’d expect on a modern podcast. But it’s listenable.
And don’t worry – I have lots of crazy What Was That Like stories in the pipeline, and I’m looking forward to bringing those to you in the near future.
Male 1
Okay, Scott, I can’t remain anonymous. I’m Jamie. I really like what you’re trying to do. About a year and a half ago – my wife’s not much of a runner, but she is the love of my life – she said, “Let’s go on a run.” And I’m like, “I’m lacing up. This is my girl.” The idea was a 3-4 mile run. So we head out the front door, turn left. I’m with my girl. What could go wrong? We’re about a half mile out, and then a gut bomb just hit – we know how this movie’s going to end – and I said, “We got to turn back. We have to turn back.” And she starts laughing. I’m like, “No, we have to turn back. This is not funny anymore.”
So we’re running back. She’s laughing. Then, I started having a few “trouser coughs”, as they say in England, and you figure she’s going to have fun with it. She sees the neighbor working in the yard and says, “Hey, how are you doing?” And then her husband comes out and he’s like, “Hey, how are you doing?” I’m dying and I want to stay away from them because of the trouser coughs, so I said, “Hey, I’ll meet you at the house.” So I take off. I’m sprinting now because we got 911 happening here.
My area where I live is all residential. There’s, like, no bailout. There’s nowhere to go. When I’m about a little bit close to my house, I realized this is going to happen. I can either stay on the road where the cars are driving by and they can see this, or I can be a ninja and cut around and run the backyards of my neighbors. because clearly none of them are going to be sitting on their back porches. So I’m cutting through the backyard and I think it’s going to be okay. It’s still going to be bad, but it’ll be less bad. Then, the neighbor right next to mine, I hear the splashing in the pool. They got, like, a family party going on and I came trucking through. Trouser coughs are going on everywhere as I come through and I was not the most obvious thing they thought was going to be happening at their party. They’re all looking at me and I’m waving like, “Hey, isn’t this great?”
I crossed the property line and there was a tree cover, and I realized I’m not going to make it in the house. I didn’t even pull my shorts down and just squatted down and just said, “You are the nastiest human being ever.” I went to the hose. I shot myself painfully as I deserved. I put the shorts in a Walmart bag, went in, took a shower, and threw the Walmart bag after that in the trash where it deserved to be. My wife has still not finished laughing. That was her favorite run of her life.
Male 2
Everyone has a poop story. Runners share their stories of bodily functions like school kids share germs. Me? I’m a pretty good pooper. I poop regularly and I poop quickly. At a race, when everyone’s worrying about port-a-potty placement in numbers, I really don’t give it much thought. If you’ve run enough, however, there’s going to be a time when you need to go and it needs to be now. If you’re on a trail out in the woods, not a big deal. If you’re in a more urban setting though it can be a bit trickier. It might start out with a, “Oh, hey, I might need to use the restroom.” It can quickly progress to a, “Ooh, I might not make it,” and looking for an ideal place to pull off. Then, ideal is not even a thought. You’re tripoding behind an apartment community sign in broad daylight. If you do it right, though, you’re off and running again in just a few minutes. I prefer tripoding versus squatting as it allows for a wider stance, which can be nice when you might not have toilet paper. Also, you want to keep your feet as far out in front of– well, you get it, and of course, always follow leap, no trace principles.
Male 3
Like most guys, I’m pretty regular, spot on, first thing in the morning– I found myself training for a 50K race where the only time that I had to run was first thing in the morning before going to work. I was trying to squeeze in like 10 and 12 and 14 miles during the week, and I would have to start really early – like, 3.30 or 4 in the morning. Inevitably, I would have to pick shit at some point during my run. I found very quickly that I needed to get either better at shitting outside in the world in the middle of a run or improve my route making abilities so that I would land back at the house every time I would have to shit. That quickly became “I needed to get better at taking a dump out in the world, and making that work.” I came up with a system to get better. Then, I realized I was starting to take dumps in routine regular places depending on the distance I was running that day or the direction I was running in. This was happening so frequently. I decided to make a Google map just to document where all this was taking place, and I’m really glad that I dredged it up and I sent it to you because, now that I’m looking at it, it’s amazing how these little brown pins, when I look at them, I can tell you exactly which direction I was facing and the fact that I could barely make it back to the house, that one particular crime. It’s crazy how all of those shits are coming back to me now.
The other thing is that I found that I needed to get better at the actual practice of it. What I found was best was to steal newspapers from my neighbors. We used to have a lot of little newspaper type flyers that would get thrown on people’s front porches and I would just take them because I was out running at four in the morning and no one was awake, anyway, which also gave me extra privacy as far as taking the dumps goes. I didn’t have to worry too much about too many passers by when it was before dark or before dawn. But at any rate, I would make what I ended up calling a shit kit, which included some precut and pre folded toilet paper. I would ball that up inside a plastic bag that one of these little newspaper things would come in that I would steal from the neighbors. This happened so frequently, I resorted to stealing them from the neighbors. I just went through our own stash quickly enough and we didn’t keep getting them fast enough so I had to borrow them.
But yeah, I would do the business somewhere behind, like, an electrical box or in the bushes, in between apartment complexes and condo buildings, and on golf courses. I know all this because I’m looking at a map and I guess that’s why I made the map so that I could look back years from now, when I was asked this very question and be able to recall specific details of having taken a shit in those particular places. That is my story.
Female 1
We were out doing speed workout on a high school track and, all of a sudden, I suddenly had to go to the bathroom. All of the bathrooms at the track were locked, which is terrible when you can see a bathroom, but you can’t get into it. She would try and figure out a way for me to take care of the problem in a trash can. I politely declined to use that though we spotted a bar not too far away. So, we continued our speed walk out by sprinting to the bar and I tried to nonchalantly go in what I thought was the back door of what turned out to be a biker bar and apparently not a lot of people clad in running gear go into this biking bar. It was kind of like a scene from a movie where the music quiets and the pool game stops and everybody turns and looks at a stranger coming in the door, who is just asking where the closest bathroom is, but I found it, took care of business, and tried to leave as nonchalantly as I came in, and then we went back to the track and finish our speed workout.
Male 4
Intestinal distress, tummy issues, shorts problems – they’re all gentle euphemisms for, oh crap. Every runner experiences them and quickly learns what works for them and gets them to a regular routine to avoid those issues. Breaking from that regular routine can lead to crappy situations that happened to me when I planned an overnight run in South Tampa to prepare for a race. Sunday night during a three day weekend seemed like the perfect opportunity to get that run in and still have time to sleep it off the next day. My plan was to run around Davis Islands, then make a big loop around South Tampa to get in 30 miles. I loaded up the water, put on my favorite vest, and hit the streets at about 10 PM. By 11, I was on Davis Islands running along Channel Drive, heading towards the airport and yacht club. If you’ve ever been in that area, you’ll know that there are houses on one side of the street and either water or the airport fence on the other. Normally, a great place to run. There are usually several restroom options along the route if needed.
I was about seven miles into my run when I felt that first familiar sign that I might need a restroom at some point. I knew that all of the restrooms near me were locked up for the night. I wasn’t concerned yet because I knew that the airport was only about two miles away. I would settle into my run and swing by the airport for a quick pit stop.
A mile and a half later, I was starting to panic. My need for a bathroom break was becoming more urgent with each passing step. I was on the trail through the park. There was no place to hide, and I had no toilet paper in my vest. It would seem like a silly idea to carry it for a run around Tampa. Anyway, I managed to contain my enthusiasm barely for the next half mile. I felt an overwhelming sense of relief as I ran through the airport parking lot and headed towards the terminal.
I got to the front doors of the well lit building only to discover that everything was locked up for the night. My mind was quickly running through any and all possible options. If I turned around, it would be at least three miles before I would have any chance of finding a restroom. By this point, my best option seemed to be to continue moving forward and take an impromptu swim at the beach near the yacht club. It was my most uncomfortable half mile ever as I trudged forward. Thoughts were swimming around my head. Do I just wait out into the water with everything on? Should I take off my shoes and socks? What if I just take everything off and go out in my birthday suit?
I was nearing the dog barking when I looked off to my left and saw a Porta-John. Salvation! By now, I didn’t care if it was the worst Porta-John ever and had no TP. I would happily sacrifice my shirt. I was surprised to find a clean and completely stocked bathroom. I was able to take care of my business and finish off my run with no other incidents. The bottom line to this story is, if you ever go out for a run with me in South Tampa, I can happily tell you where all of the restroom and construction zone Porta-Johns are and when they’re open, and I always carry TP if I’m running at night.
Male 5
I’ve always felt my poop story was a little unique because it involved the police. I was out at the Clay Roads in Claremont a few years ago on a Friday night. It started after dark. I was going to run a loop. I’d never been out there before, but it’s just 10 miles all the way around. I did make a wrong turn too. I’m not sure how to do that, but there was only one turn that rings you back towards the beginning and I made a left. It ended up being a 14 mile run. But once I straightened back out and I headed back towards the beginning of the loop – it’s probably just about 10 miles in – nature called. Okay. No big deal. There’s nobody around. There’s a nice big tree right there on the side of the road, and I just duck under there and figure I’ll take care of business and finish up my run. I’m not the most efficient at going to the bathroom on trail. I haven’t perfected the squat by any means, so I prefer to just take my shorts right off and go that way. I don’t have to worry about making them off.
Just as I’m finishing up my business, I’ve got my wipes, then I’m ready to bury them, all of a sudden, light comes around the corner – the closest corner there is – and I’ve got nowhere to do, no time to think. I’m kind of off the side of the trail, but not really. So, all I can think is, in the quick second before they get there, I hold my shorts up in front of me just standing there. I’ve got both hands on shorts, so I can’t wave or nod really. They just may see me, may not, who knows. So, they go by and I finish right up, put my shorts on, and I keep going like, “Okay, no big deal.” I was out here running 14 miles, I happened to see one car at the inopportune time but thinking nothing of it. I keep going.
It wasn’t more than a mile or two down the road coming at me, there’s another car. As they get close, they flip on their lights and it’s a police officer. He rolls his window down as he approaches me. I approach him and say, “Good evening, officer.” He was, “We got a call about a naked man on the side of the trail.” And I just kind of played it off. I kept it very casual. “Oh, yeah. probably me. I had to go to the bathroom just a little bit back and I stepped off the side of the road, went to the bathroom, and a car came by.” He was a little confused. That’s what I was doing out there. I did happen to have an ID. I don’t know why I needed to carry anything – for some reason, I thought I would put my ID and a debit card just in case I came across a random phantom mirage of a gas station – but I had it on me. So he actually ran my ID to make sure I was an upstanding citizen. A couple minutes later, kind of awkward, he wondered why I was being reported as a naked man on the side of the road. He decided that it was no big deal, that I really was just out for a run and had to use the bathroom. So, that’s my story. That’s the only time I’ve really ever had an issue while running and happened to involve the police.
So, I hope you’ve enjoyed as much as I thought it was entertaining that night too. All right, thank you.
Male 6
I’m usually pretty careful about not having that situation in a race, so I try to take extra care so as to not have to deal with an emergency poop situation on race day. However, sometimes it happens on training runs and it happened to me very recently. It’s not something that happens often, but it happened to me very recently. My buddy and I were out for a tempo run actually. We had to hold a 10K pace for a total of 10K, almost. I think we held a 10K pace for five miles or something like that, and then, for the last two, we sped up about 20 seconds a mile. So it was a very tough workout. Then, we were just doing a cool down run for a couple of miles. On that cool down run, my guts really sort of felt heavy in the– it sort of hit the bottom, if you know what I mean. I thought it might have just been some air and it wasn’t.
We were running around campus at our local college here in town, and my buddy– when I explained to him that, “Hey dude, I think I’m about to shit myself.” So he ran ahead to try to find a porta-let because, sometimes, there’s construction around and sometimes we can find porta-lets in different places. So he was running ahead. As he got about a whole block ahead, I had to scream ahead to him and just say, “Hey, forget it. I just got to find a dark place.” Good thing. It was before daylight. So I wound up getting over close to the football stadium and just kind of doing my business like a wild animal in the middle of the night, almost. It was pre daylight hours. It was crazy. I had to take an emergency dump. I mean, I don’t like to have to do that, but there was no alternative. It was either shit yourself or shit the ground, and I picked the ground. The worst part of the whole deal was it was really cold that morning, and I had to use my brand new Under Armor beanie. It was reflective, print and had, like, a neon– not neon but, like, a bright yellow beanie cap that I loved. It just had, like, little flaps that came down over my ears and places for earbuds to actually go in through the beanie rather than under. So it was an awesome little beanie cap, but I had to wipe my ass with it. I don’t use that beanie cap anymore, to say the least.
Anyway, it’s kind of a gross subject. I’ll be looking forward to hearing this podcast, man. That will be bloody gross. But that’s mine, thanks.
Male 7
Anyways, this is Christian Myron. I have no desire to be anonymous. I could care less. Anyone who could possibly listen wouldn’t be offended by anything I would say. I have no pride whatsoever left since I am sharing poop stories with strangers on the internet. My first story comes from my first ultra well, the 50K in southern Florida called Croom Zoom. I wasn’t sure what to expect – it being my first ultra and all – but it was a glorious morning for a run. It was dark, it was cool – unexpectedly so for a Florida race. I had to run with a headliner for the first time. I just remember descending down these hills and rising up over these small hills and thinking the world was amazing and that I was amazing and that I would set records. People would talk about the great deeds that I accomplished that day.
Maybe 10 miles in, feeling good, feeling great. I can’t feel an all too familiar pain. At first, you ignore it. You’re in denial. Obviously, no one wants to admit that they may soon lose bowel control or worse – to come to the cliche runner’s poop needs. But I was confronted with this terrifying reality. I was running with a good friend of mine named Mike. I’ll keep him anonymous just in case he mentioned the same story as my poop story. But as we were running, I began to confess to him that I had to stop, I had to poop. We were setting a blazing speed at this point – at least for us. We were running mid eight minute miles on our first all trail. Doing great. We’d already eaten on trail, done all the things that real ultra runners do. We felt like legit runners at this point and the worst thing that could happen was if he had to leave me or separate from me because we were just looking so well together, keeping each other motivated. But those bubbles – I kept hearing the bubbles – and these cramps and that cold sweat you get when you know, you absolutely know you need to drop a deuce. There’s no denying it and you’re not going to make it. It’s just going to happen right then and there.
A funny thing happened. Mike turned to me and said, “You don’t have to take a poop.” I assure you, he couldn’t possibly have that sort of power over me – just those words tell me that. So we kept running. Eventually, I was clenching so tight, my running gait had changed and I was almost wimping like someone had shot me in the leg and they’re getting stiff. We kept running the same speed. I kept telling him, “Mike, I’m pretty sure I have to stop.”
“Nope, you don’t have to poop.”
“Alright.” Kept going. Eventually, believe it or not, the poop never came. We got back to the start-finish area. I was looking at the porta-potty and my body and I had a really long discussion with myself and I asked the body, “You need to go.” And it didn’t. One of my true stories is a time when my buddy Mike had control of my own bowel. “Pretty impressive”, I thought.
My other poop story was far less dramatic, although I’ll try to use vocabulary words to make it sound so, a little – see if I succeed. I was out for– it was going to be a short run, maybe three or four miles. This wasn’t on trails. This was out on the roads in an area where there weren’t any stores or any place for me to stop. It was probably 10 PM or so, and I was running in Sarasota, Florida. When I got to about a three mile mark, three mile out, I was doing an out and back. I decided I would just keep running, of course, because 6 miles is so short of a run. I was like, “The bathroom is 6 miles upfront.”
I’m at the three mile march. I had passed a 7-Eleven 2 miles ago, and I had marked that spot as a possibility to use the restroom if necessary. While the road I was running wasn’t extremely busy, it wasn’t the kind of place that afforded an opportunity for roadside pee. I was hydrating. I really wasn’t worried about the poop thing. It’s never really been a problem for me because of that one time in my first ultra race – someone wheeled the feeling of poop away from me. I was sure that I was never going to suffer that sort of fate again. So, at the three mile mark, feeling good. I kept running 4, 7 mile mark, 8 mile mark. That’d have been good, but I knew I could just run another mile. Then I went 10 miler, and then I could brag on Facebook – And of course, like any good story, there’s that moment where it all goes to crap.
I’m about 200 yards from the turnaround of a five mile out and you get that feeling. I think it probably started with a burp. Then, it came out– sort of gas that follows you even when you’re running – the kind that makes you wonder what you had ingested. Maybe something had died inside you or you were offended by your own essence. It kept chasing me and I thought, “Well, it’s just gas. You’re a human male. These things happen.” So I pushed on, of course, to hit the five mile turnaround. So I turned around and I started running back. I could do the mental calculation of how far away was that 7-Eleven. It was four miles away. So, I started slowing down a bit. Again, cold sweats. You’re already sweating, you’re running in Florida, you’re already sweating, but your body produces a different type of sweat because your epidermis feels more alive. Every nerve in your body is suddenly aware of what’s happening, and your gut just kept going.
Looking around desperately hoping there would be a palm tree, a ditch or anything, but there’s nothing large, open, lit area with recently built homes. In Florida, they took down all the trees to build all the beautiful wafer-thin condo. Great. No where to hide behind, just ornate entrances with Mercedes and Porches going by. I knew I really couldn’t pop a squat without getting picked up by the cop. Kept going.
Eventually, I could see the 7-Eleven in the distance and I thought, “Well, I’ve used that seven 11 before.” And quite frankly, it’s the kind of place where you sit down and you think, “Yep, I just caught crabs or maybe herpes.” Really defecating yourself in public might be better than resting my butt on that particular toilet seat. But I was in danger and I was worried and sweating. At that point, I’d somewhat battled against the fear and I’d mastered my gut, mastered my bowel. I did the mental thing or the ninja. I didn’t have to go. I pushed past 7-Eleven, feeling proud of myself, checking my garment, just cruising along at a solid high 7-minute pace. Now everything is great, and then it wasn’t so great. I felt it again and I was torn. Now, I was about four tenths away from the 7-Eleven, six tenths away from the home pot advantage, which is always pooping somewhere else. You want to make it home.One more tenth and I’m limping. I’m limping like blisters have exploded on my feet there for a hundred miles long.
I stop to walk. I can’t even run anymore. I’m overwhelmed and I’m worried and I’m getting desperate and I finally decided, “I’m just going to poop. I’m going to poop right here. I have a little strip of grass and some trees and I’m going to poop right here.” Now it was dark and there were cars coming in both directions, so it was hard for me to get good night vision going, so I couldn’t really see where I was going. So, I took one step and then another to fall into a ditch. There was, like, a watery road-side ditch filled with trash and rubber tires and probably even dead bodies – anything could have been down there. So I was in a moment of terror. I reached out to grab something. I think it was one of those vines that choke out the good trees. When I grabbed it, I got scared and I was starting to fall. So those tightly corned muscles, muffle holding a bile and refuse in my body, let go. I was standing upright and I was sure I knew that I had grabbed my pants. I was sure I could feel the heavy lump down there, and I stood there for a minute, mastering my faculty. I was hoping that a better option would come to me. None came. Brown streaks running down my leg, on my pants, hanging low. I couldn’t feel anything, but I did feel better. My gut felt better. Because of that, I was sure that, somehow, I definitely crapped my pants.
As a runner, I had to finish. I ran the five tenths back to the house and I came inside. The friend I was living with at the time looked at me, “What’s wrong with you?” I said, “It finally happened. I crapped my pants while I was running.” He was laughing. I was laughing. I hobbled back to the bathroom. Then, in the bathroom, staring in the mirror, I was afraid to take my pants down. I could feel it there between my legs – the one lumpy mess of mess – and I knew what had happened. I knew I’ve to tell the story. I would have to explain what happened that night on that run. I could hear his laughter coming down the hallway. I stood in the bathroom and mustered all my bravery. I fumbled with the tie on my running shorts – worry sweat, running sweat, water sweat. I dropped my drawers and I was clean. I didn’t go. It didn’t happen. Can’t explain it. It was a miracle. God intervened or the universe itself decided to spare me that particular embarrassment. I was good. I was fresh.
So those are my two poop stories. Perhaps, they’re missing the requisite poop portion, but the truth is I haven’t ever actually lost bowel control on a run. I’ve always been threatened, or I felt that horrifying moment where you lose control and you can only focus on what might happen or where you might need to go, but never have I had to let it rip and fly off the road. I was going, but I almost fell on my deck and somehow pulled all the waste back up into my body. Well, there you have it. Those are my true stories. Have fun listening to me talking about my poop.
Male 8
I was out west, maybe up in the Rocky, going along on this beautiful trail, miles from any road. I was a young boy. Not being from this country, people taught me I could use many things – stones, sticks, leaves, and pine cones. Well, everyone talks about that million dollar view. I went there and I was up in the mountains and I told my buddy, “Hey, I’m going to go for the million dollar view.” So I started walking. It was dusk and I was walking along and I’m like, “Hey, people say you can use pine cones.” So I went and gathered pine cones in my pocket. I got to the spot in front of a valley, found smooth stones with little cracks, like, going down in the middle, and I had the best poop ever. Then, I used some pine cones to clean up. Well, it’s kind of dark. And those pine cones were kind of fresh, and I guess the best way to say it is I got myself a Brazilian wax job. I spent about 30 minutes pulling out all my hair. Yeah, that was pretty bad, pretty painful. But my butt hole is clean. When I got back to the group, I just said, “Give me some of that germicide cream/gel.” That’s my poop story. Don’t use pine cones.
Male 9
I was on a 170 mile Ultra Race in between the north lip of the Grand Canyon and the Grand Staircase. It was a seven day self-supported race, and it was day three. I had to poop in the middle of the day. It started to get blazing hot. There’s absolutely no cover, so you pretty much know you’re going to be seen by some of the other runners, so you pretty much chalk that up. So I dropped my drawers and pulled out my Ziploc bag. Why? Because the race was a leave-no-trace race. Also, we happened to have a race director in our state of Florida here called Caleb Wilson, who’s the race director of the Fort Clinch 100 Miler and 50 Miler Endurance race. He has a very catchy thing that will forever stick in my head until the day I die, and that is, “No pooping on the trail.” So between those two things, I knew what I had to do. I had to make sure that I got myself all done and finished up out there so that I could be done with my business and then also collected up my specimen to make sure I was able to discard of it at the proper location at one of the water drops that had a garbage can, by and up in the upcoming space theater.
So the good part is it was actually a successful poop. Very successful, felt good about myself, lost a little weight, and hopped back on it. The only person that really saw what I was doing was the person behind me. No big deal. Typical day out on the trail. I throw this Ziploc bag inside of my self-supported bag in the back, zip it up and off I go to the water stop where I knew I was going to take a little bit of a lunch break.
Here’s where the story gets interesting, the cerebral side of pooping on the trail – brain games. I get up to this water stop. There’s a chair there, a garbage can, and of course the water that’s been dropped for us. There’s some professional photographers, they strike up a conversation with me and they say, “What is that? Can we see that?” And they started taking pictures of the bag of food that I pulled out from my bag and I had my big long spoon. Of course, it looks like baby vomit or baby poop all mushed up in a bag that’s now 85 degrees because it’s been on my back facing the sun all day. They’re asking me questions about how many calories in and I can’t believe that I’m eating that, and nobody else has eaten that. As they’ve come through, everybody else’s using more gel or gummy type items. I explained to them what I was doing but, more importantly, they could not imagine that I was gut wrenching stuff down based off of the way that it looked. So as we’re talking, they’re letting me eat a little bit, but they’re also keeping me busy with some questions, probably also doing a temperature check to make sure I was doing fine.
As they’re talking to me, I notice that one of the photographer’s eyes starts to wander over to my bag that’s slapped open. Now, inside this bag is the poop bag that is a clear Ziploc sandwich bag that can absolutely be seen amongst my other free watered down, hydrated foods that were already done in a Ziploc bag, sitting all piled next to it that’s now visible to them. So the one person really starts to lose eye contact with me and I noticed that he’s looking over at my bag, sweating it out a little bit, looking over at my bag, and I looked at him and looked down at it knowing full well what he was looking at. A bit of sweat rolled down his brow, and I said to him “That’s going to be for the next stop when it gets really hot.” I mean, the look on his face was like, “There’s no way that you’re going to eat that.” So I smiled at him. I started to zip up my bag and get ready to go, and I reached in my bag, looked him in the eye, gave him a wink, picked up the actual poop bag, threw it in the garbage can, gave him another wink, and said, “I don’t think I’m going to be wanting that flavor in the next couple of minutes at the next stop. Have a great day.” And off I went.
The look on this person’s face was so stymied that it was totally worth all of the time spent there eating this meal. That was priceless for me to see the look on this professional photographer’s face, not only at what we were doing, but what he could not believe with his own eyes that I’m not so sure what he thinks of today, but at least we let him off the hook towards the end with a smile and a nod. Anyway, that is my poop story.
Female 2
I have to start by saying I have kind of a reputation with my running buddies as being the one that always have to stop and poop, wherever we are, regardless of time or day or distance of run. So that’s me. I’m that person. This run happened at my parents’ house. They live in a neighborhood where the house all has 5 to 10 acres and it’s surrounded by horse trails and it’s very bucolic. So it’s a lovely place to run. And it’s my childhood home, so I know the area very well. I know the roads, I know all the good poop spots. It was a five or six mile run that day by myself. My mom was with the kids, so I just thought I’d go for a quick run. I just went on one of my usual routes, then running on the road – not a lot of traffic in the neighborhood at all and the speed limit is low, so you don’t really have to worry about cars. Everybody’s friendly and everybody knows everybody, so you always give a kind wave when you pass a car. So, enjoy my run. I’ve already passed a few of my spots and I’m feeling great. I’m having a great run. It’s a beautiful day and.
I’m probably about a mile and a half away from my mom’s house at this point, and I’m feeling that feeling like, “Oh, I think I’ll have to go.” But I’m almost home, so I’ll be fine. So I passed my last poop spot about a mile from home at this point, and I’m like, “Ah, it’s my last chance to go. No, I’m good. I’m good. I can make it home. I don’t have to go that bad.” So I keep running on the road and I get about a third of a mile away from home and I’m like, “Oh man. Oh man. Game over. I have to go and I have no place to go.” At this point in the neighborhood. I passed all the little side entrances to the horse trails. I passed all the houses that have all of the trees and the bushes. I’m now on a little stretch of the neighborhood where everybody had large open pastures and their homes are towards the back of the pastures, and it’s just wide open, no trees, and I just have a solid road in front of me.
So I try to just get a little further and I even just walk. I’m like, “If I walk, I can just make it home.” It’s not happening. It’s coming out one way or another. I come up to just the bend in the road and there’s a telephone pole. I’m like, “Well, this is going to have to do.” I haven’t seen a car in a while. It’s in the middle of the day and it’s not like people are coming home from work yet. I’m like, “Okay, maybe I’ll be safe.” So I’m at the bend in the road and I get behind the telephone pole. Soon, now, a car comes up behind me and I’m like, “Great. Maybe he won’t see me. Maybe he won’t see me.”
This man in the truck was just driving by – and the low speed limit I think is what caught me because he’s only going maybe 25-30 miles an hour – and he sees me. I mean, who am I kidding? I’m behind a telephone pole on the side of the road and he slows down and notices me, but he pulls around the curb. I think, “Oh, maybe he just kept driving.” So I finished what I was doing and I just waited a couple of seconds and kind of looked around. I don’t see anybody else. I don’t see him. I’m like, “Okay, maybe he left.” I walk close to the fence very slowly to just kind of peek around the bend, and my walk runs out at this point because he’s pulled off to the side of the road and he’s waiting for me to run forward. I forgot to mention that this part in the neighborhood is the main road and there’s only one entrance and one exit to the neighborhood. So he knows that I have to come forward because, if I turn around and run back, then I’m just going back further to the back of the neighborhood and I’m basically going into a dead end because the back road is just a big circle. So he knows I have to come forward and he’s going to see me.
At this point, I kind of panic because my family has lived in the neighborhood for a while and they know everybody and, if he sees me, he’s going to know who I am. I’m like, “Greg.” So I stopped to think, like, “What, can I do? How can I get out of this?” I’m nowhere near any sort of cover. Like I said, at this point, it’s just wide open packers except for this one bend in the road. So I was like, “Fine, I’ll just wait him out. I’m just going to sit here and I’m going to wait.” I’m looking at my watch. I’m like, “One minute, two minutes or five minutes. Okay. Surely he’s gone.” I walk forward, he’s still there. He’s still waiting for me. After five minutes, I’m like, “Oh my goodness, I can’t believe that this is happening.”
So I think the only thing I can do at this point is turn around and run backwards, cross the street to where he can’t see me. I know I’m not in his line of sight, even though he’s around the bend. So, I ran backwards far enough. When I cross the street, he won’t see me. I hop over a neighbor’s fence, I run as fast as I can through their pasture. Mind you, no tree. Hopefully, the neighbor doesn’t see me running through and, hopefully, their dogs don’t come out and start barking and hopefully don’t bite me. I don’t know that I’ve ever run so fast in my life. So I run through this neighbor’s pasture and I hop their back fence, and the back fence leads up to one of the horse trails, which luckily run past my mom and dad’s pasture. So I hop the neighboring back fence onto the horse trail and I’m running, and I just don’t even know– I was probably breaking the sound barrier at this point and it’s all muddy and wet tall grass. It’s not like a groomed, easy trail. There are potholes. I ran way faster than I’ve probably ever ran in my life. I cover the distance I’d probably go backwards crossing my neighbors pasture and then running to my parents’ house – probably about a half a mile or so. I don’t know how fast it was, how long it took me, but I got to my parents’ house.
I hopped their fence and ran through my parents’ back pasture and my dad is sitting there getting the trash that he could take off to the road. He sees me running across the pasture and he’s just staring at me. I come in and I come up to the driveway. I run past my dad and I just run into the house and I slam the door and my heart is about to pound out of my chest. He walked in. He is like, “Whatcha doing?” I run to the front door to see if I can see the guy in the truck drive past. I sit there and I’m waiting. As I’m waiting, I’m telling my dad the story and, sure enough – I don’t know how much time has passed at this point – I finally see a guy in the truck drive past. He had waited quite some time for me to pass. I roughly know what he was going to say to me, but I escaped my public poop episode, unscathed.
That day, I was wearing a white visor that had the logo of our Florida Ultrarunner shirt, my visor, and I was wearing, like, a pink sport bra and blue shorts. Since that day, I have not worn my fur visor or that sports bra or no shorts in my current neighborhood again because I don’t want to take the risk of passing the guy in the truck on the road and him noticing that visor because the word would surely get out – who my parents are, where I lived, and what I was doing on the side of the road that day. So that is my poop story. Hopefully, in my future running escapade, I won’t have another story to share similar to it.
Female 3
I was living in Tallahassee at the time. There were these trails about maybe 10 minutes from my house that I would drive to and then run around in this loop that went all the way around the lake and then intertwined, called Maclay Garden, and I think it’s like five miles total all the way around. So I’m bopping along and running and listening to my music and, all of a sudden, I hear this thumping, like a stampede coming up behind me. I turn around and it’s the Forest State University cross country team. So, of course, little runner, me, Sam, I am like, “Okay, yeah, I’m going to pick up the pace and I’m going to start running with these guys.” So I’m just pretending I don’t notice them and picking up the pace.
These guys are very fast. At the time, I thought they were very huge. Then, all of a sudden, it hits me. I am now running with these guys and I have to poop. So, I tried to slow down, but there just so happened to be a break in the pack of this group of Florida state cross country guys running, and one of the guys was kind of running with me. So, I had to stop all the way, pretend I was tying my shoe, and hop in the woods and just keep running. Some of the guys heard me running into the woods and turned around and looked at me and I was like, “Oh my goodness.” So there goes that. I think that was a bit of foreshadowing to my future running adventure, but I think that is my best poop story. There are many, but that’s the best one I can think of. I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you.
Female 4
My favorite story is one that happened in the winter. I live in Michigan, so we get a great deal of snow. We were out for a run – myself and two of my running buddies – and the urge came upon me. I thought I was hiding rather well behind a little clump of trees, but I kept hearing noises and wasn’t really sure it was going on. I just about finished up when the noises started getting louder, so I quickly wrapped things up and started sprinting back out to the road right in front of my two running buddies cropped up against each other, laughing their heads off. Unbeknown to me, what was behind the little clump of trees I was on was the main thoroughfare for a snowmobile pass that runs all the way through a couple of counties, and there were two snowmobiles quickly coming along my track right behind me. It was grand. They had a good giggle, but it ended well. All is well. No one saw anything – I don’t think – and, yeah, we finished our run. So there you go.
Male 10
I’m going to tell the other side of poop, the side from the race director. Yes. I personally have had experiences out on the run when I haven’t had a bathroom and had to go deep into the woods and dig a hole with my heel and bury whatever came out, and then kick the dirt back over with the side of my foot and made sure to do the same thing with any leftover paperwork. I tell this because, as the race director of several races in the forest, I realize that not everybody knows how to bury their faeces. Faeces have been a big issue with races all over the country, and it came to light four years ago when somebody had a home camera of a trail runner out in California. I don’t know if this lady had a run in with the property owner – I suspect she had. Anyway, she used to go poop in this guy’s yard pretty much on every run, and he caught her on camera. He probably put that camera out there just for that purpose. So after that, it became an uproar with our property owners. And when I went out to Western States training camp, they talked about there is no pooping from this property line on. If you have to go, do it before we get there, hold it in, but do not go anywhere between this line and this line or we risk losing our permits. I complied with all those restrictions.
When we went to hold our next Croom meeting, talking to the park ranger, they said, “Listen, we don’t want anybody going to the bathroom in the parking lot. Well, we do provide two porta-lets as well as the park bathrooms, and we’ve had reports of people pooping in the parking lot. I’m thinking, “Well, I sure people have peed in there, but nobody would poop in the parking lot and truthfully, never had seen anybody.” So if you go to a race and you hear those instructions, one trail runner in California probably started at all, so we have to give those instructions and never had any problems with anybody complying with it before until this year at the Croom Zoom 100 mile trail run. By the way, cleaning up was held the first Saturday in January, unless, of course, that Saturday is January 1st, then it’s the second Saturday in January.
We were cleaning up the course and the park ranger called me over, and I’m like, “Yes sir, what’s up?” He said, “We had somebody poop in the parking lot.” I’m like, “I really doubt it. We instructed them. We have porta-lets up here, and it wouldn’t be totally unusual for somebody to go in the woods, but then, we’ve instructed them to bury it.” He goes, “No, we had somebody pooped in the parking lot.” I’m like, “No way. Could you show me?” And he goes, “I sure can. Walk over there.” And I said, “Sir, there’s no way that was a trail runner. The equestrians do this quite a lot in this area. That had to be a horse.” He said, “I don’t know.” I mean, we’re basically examining the evidence and I’m like, “Sir, there’s no way somebody that could produce could run a hundred miles” because I’m looking at this mound, I’m like– honestly, it’s the kind of thing where the comedian Bill Engvall said, “After your first 10 years of marriage, you won’t go in front of your partner.” He goes, after that, “Honey, get the camera. You ain’t going to believe this.” “Well, this was a honey. Get the camera moment.” This was as big as I’ve ever seen a mound. So I actually convinced him that it had to be a horse or a bear, but probably a horse. I said, “The horses don’t know to pick up after themselves.”
I kind of chased him and just stood there. I said, “But what I’m going to do is I’m going to bury it anyway because nobody should see this.” I talked to him. Finally, he left. As soon as he left, I picked my foot up and I reached out and I picked up the toilet paper. Yes, this was the human being that had done this, and I was standing on the toilet paper so he wouldn’t see it. I threw those shoes away and I sang the ABC song twice as I washed my hand with steaming hot water. Please don’t poop in the parking lot. And if you park in the woods, dig a hole with your heel or whatever. I had to use a backhoe to bury this and cover it up. Thank you.
Scott
I hope you enjoyed this episode. I hadn’t heard these stories in a long time so it was kind of fun to listen to my friends again. And don’t worry, the format of the show isn’t changing. But sometimes, you know, you just gotta take a break and hear some poop stories.
Our Facebook question this past Tuesday was: What life lesson did you learn the hard way? I love this question so much because it’s something that just about everyone can identify with. Including me! If you learned a tough lesson once, come over and tell us about it – because you might help prevent someone else from going through what you experienced. We ask a question like this every Tuesday morning in the Facebook group. And with a group of more than 9000 people, we get a huge variety of answers and comments. And it’s always fun because there’s never any political talk! You can join for free at WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook
Poop related graphics for this episode were created by Bob Bretz. And the full poop story transcriptions were created by James Lai.
Coming up on the podcast – one week from today is the next Scott Tells a Story episode, and after that is the special episode we do each year around 9/11 and the tragic – but often inspiring – stories that come from that day.
Stay safe, and I’ll see you back here next week.