The Case of the Missing Spree

My first leg of the 57 mile, 5 person relay race had been an absolutely invigorating and inspiring 6 mile run at 7 am. As the sun rose, I began running in a beautiful, green farming valley, ran straight up to the ridge east of the valley and then north to a local farm.

Four hours later, I had eaten, drank plenty of water and was as rested as I was going to be. I felt ready to run my second leg of the relay race. For this leg, I was to run 7.1 miles from the center of a small town, up into the foothills ending at a gorgeous lake. I was dropped off by my teammates at my tag off spot. I put a pony tail in my hair, readied my sunglasses and set my MP3 player to the appropriate settings. My son had also given me a packet of Sprees candy. Being a bit nervous about my second run of the day, which was ALL uphill, I thought I would eat one of his candies every 10 minutes or so. It would give me some way to pass the time and break the run up into smaller chunks. I was wearing shorts with built in underwear. They also had a small pocket on the inside waistband that was the perfect size for a key. I started to put the candies in that pocket when much to my surprise, my teammate that I was to tag off with showed up! I clapped hands with her and started running. I quickly shoved the Sprees into the pocket and turned on my MP3 player.

It wasn't long before I felt the jiggling. I soon realized that I had completely missed the pocket and the brightly colored, hard shelled Sprees had all gone inside the underwear of my shorts. Good God, I thought. This is not going to turn out well. I was still in town at this point and there were many spectators lining the running trail. I frantically tried to think of my options. Leave the Sprees in my shorts or......................get them out. I knew I couldn't run 7.1 miles with candies floating around the inside of my shorts and eventually migrating to my...um..."hoo ha" parts. So I decided to do the only thing I could. I reached my hand into my shorts and searched for a runaway Spree candy. While spectators were watching. I continued do this embarrassing action, over and over. At the same time, I attempted to run a fairly quick pace. I felt the unspoken pressure of my teammates to run a time fast enough that we would win a ribbon in our age division. "I must remove the Sprees." I thought. And so I did. I removed them all-one by one. The spectators lining the trail looked at me like I was a pornographic, self pleasuring, running fool. It was surreal. It was horribly embarrassing. But, I did finish the job. The Spree removal job, that is.

I was too nervous to try and fit the Sprees back into the little pocket. Yet I didn’t want to throw them away. They were still perfectly good to eat, for the most part. Besides, I didn’t want to disappoint my son. So, holding the recovered Sprees in my hand, I went on to finish the extremely difficult run, eating a candy every few minutes. The Spree color eventually started melting on to my skin. By the time I finished my leg of the race, I had a full rainbow of sticky colors dyed into the palm of my hand. It took two days to get rid of it. FINALLY, I came to the finish line and tagged off to my teammate. After I caught my breath and drank some water, I told my other teammates about my Spree story. They were quite amused and decided that if we did this race again next year, our team name would be the "Spree Girls". I was only somewhat amused.

About an hour later we were finally at a civilized location where there was a bathroom. I ran into a stall and quickly pulled down my shorts, for I desperately needed to pee. One of my teammates ended up in the stall next to me. As my shorts came down, a stark white, chalky Spree fell out, from who knows where, plopped itself on the floor, and rolled into my teammate’s stall next to me. I was so horribly embarrassed and appalled and horrified and amused all at the same time. My teammate called out from the other stall, "Is that what I think it is?" I reluctantly replied, "Um.....yes." There was a painfully long, silent pause as my teammate processed the shocking information before her. Finally, she said, "Um.....I thought you said you got them all out? Where has it been all this time? And WHY is it white?? Where did all the color go?"

I found myself unable to speak. Finally, she said, "Yes, I agree with you. Its better if I don't know the details."

My team ended up placing second in our age division. And I learned a valuable lesson. For next year’s race, I’m bringing M&M’s. They melt in your mouth, not in your……hands.

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