epic run, epic taint chafe

24 miles. 3:20. the bad-asses involved were me, greg, jonny, and bentley. i dont always enjoy running in rhody, but this run was awesome. we were on single track trails almost the whole time. its hard to find good trails down here, so theres a good chance we just ran all of them in one shot. everything about this run was awesome. i didnt have any problems with my feet, and my energy levels were good, despite only getting three hours of sleep (all night i had been looking at a clock that was two hours slow. weird, i know). i avoided bonking even though i had trouble getting a lot of food down for breakfast and unexpectedly found no gatorade in the fridge. also, we ran over some cool rock formations that i never knew existed. definitely awesome. ok, so i guess there was one thing that wasnt awesome. about an hour into the run, i started to chafe, which is never fun. some people chafe under their arms. others on the inner thighs, and theres always the aesthetically pleasing nipple chafe. i had none of the above. i had the ever-popular (or not) taint chafe (some say grundle). i didnt want to think about it, so i tried to focus on my footwork. that helped at first, but the burning kept getting worse. i was pulling and tugging on my clothing the rest of the way, trying to get slightly less uncomfortable. i was also trying not to complain about it alot. by the end of the run, it burned so bad i couldnt go more than two minutes without thinking about it. somehow, it didnt ruin the run for me. i was so happy to be done because it meant the worst of the burning was over. i was wrong about that. i like really hot showers, so i was suffering pretty bad. in spite of that, i would do this run again, but not without putting sport shield down there first. since im now on the subject, it reminds of when we were at a race and a friend asked if anyone had some sport shield he could borrow. i let him use mine, and he started using it on the standard chafe spots. about halfway through he asked, 'you dont mind?'. i said 'its no prob, i only use it on my balls anyway." he froze. 'nah, im messin with ya', i said. but after today, there will be no joke about it. i will be so lubed up down there it will look like im ready to do something other than run. (yes i went there. you will too if you want to get the joke.) 77 miles this week. church.