Tennis Balls: Non-Therapeutic

I am sitting on a tennis ball. This afternoon, I was lying on a tennis ball. The tennis ball and I are becoming very friendly. Yes, in case you were wondering, it hurts, so it's kind of a tense friendship. I would like to, say, take a racket and thwack my friend clear across the grass, but that might actually please the ball and send it into a reverie about Wimbledon. So instead, I will keep it under my ass, where it can communicate closely to the knot at the top of my IT Band.

I am wincing. Wincing, quite obviously, reminds me of my coach. Wincing, cursing, and panting. This is what Nate does to me, but not in the good way. Nate assigns me mileage that hurts. And to get rid of the hurt? More stuff that hurts. Like tennis balls in my tendons.

But because I'm radically faster than I was a year ago when I started training with him, I know I'd do whatever he says to be race-ready and meet my goal. Like crack. If Nate put "smoke a pipe of crack" on the schedule for my taper week, I'd be in the old station wagon headed to some alley in Lowell with my credit card. (Dealers take Visa, I assume).

And I know I'd do whatever Nate said to take away the pain that speed work causes.

Sit on a mace? Right on.

Snort crushed Vicodin? Hells yeah.

Sit in a tub filled with ice water so cold it burns? Bring it, baby.

Oh, wait... I guess I already do that last one.

Good god, he's a sadist. It is no lie that the man once told me a massage should hurt. For that reason, I almost called the one listing under Massage: Non-Therapeutic in my phonebook before I realized that "Christine and Company" was probably an altogether different kind of massage. Though, some might take issue with categorizing Christine et al.'s services as "non-therapeutic," and I'm sure she'd make it hurt if you asked her to.

Wow. That was a tangent from which I cannot seem to return.

Christine = pleasure. Coach = pain. Ah ha, there it is. Nate has sadistic but effective training plans, and the only happy ending you get from his treatments for injury is the ability to run more and harder.

And I do have a masochistic streak, which is why I let him spank me with those speed workouts and his remedies for injuries. But just once, I want to email him with an ache or pain and have him recommend a strawberry-scented bubble bath and a cup of hot chocolate and those little tiny marshmallows.

Until that day, it's the tennis ball and ice bath for me. Let's just hope Nate doesn't advocate I join a pyramid scheme that promises high returns and a BQ. Cause I'd do it.