Side Stitches

That cramping pain you sometimes get on your right side, right under your ribs, is caused by stretching the ligaments that attach your liver to your diaphragm. The pain is called a side stitch.

How most people get side stitches, I'm told, is simply from exhaling when your right foot hits the ground. Statistics show that 70 percent of all people breathe out when their left foot hits the ground, while 30 percent breathe out when their right foot hits the ground. I'm told that the pain on your side has something to do with your liver going down due to the force of your right foot and your diaphragm going up due to exhalation.

All of these thoughts were in my head as I rounded my fifth lap around the rec center track and started to feel a sharp pain on my side. The side stitch. I've been training for the 2005 Chicago Marathon, and today I was supposed to run 8 miles, which is 45 laps around the track. My side was aching like a motherfucker, but I couldn't stop. I had a mission to accomplish.

I felt like John Hartigan from Sin City when he's having a heart attack at the worst possible time and he says, "No. Not now. Get yourself together, old man. Nancy Callahan. Eleven years old." Except I was more like: "No. Not now. Get yourself together, fat boy. Rec center track. 45 laps."

The reason it was so important for me to complete my laps is because last year I promised myself I would do the 2004 Chicago Marathon, but didn't end up doing it. I took too many days off, ate too many slices of pizza. So this year I've decided to train for the marathon with renewed discipline. There would be no days off. There would be no slices of pizza. Pain on my side? Don't be a pansy. Slow down? Get real.

So there I was, embarrassed and angry about my liver aching, and clutching my side so hard that my hand was turning red. I kept telling myself to exhale only when my left foot hit the ground, but for some reason I just couldn't get the timing right. It became clear to me that the only thing that would get me to complete those 45 laps was pure heart and determination. And a little bit of Zen.

The philosophy of Zen centers around waking up to the present moment. If you keep it moment to moment, then everything is clear. According to Zen, existence is found in the silence of the mind (no-mind), beyond the chatter of our internal dialog.

No-mind, I told myself. No mind.

So I continued to run, focusing on every individual step I took, mentally channeling the pain somewhere else. And it was working. Sure, I was in a lot of pain, but I was actually making progress with my laps. No mind.

Unfortunately, Zen was only good up until my 35th lap. At that point, my head was tilted up to the right in agony as I slobbered all over my shoulder. At that point my body was all like, fuck this "no mind" bullshit. And so it appeared that I was going to have to stop at 35 laps, but that's when I saw an ass.

It was a nice, round one, one that should have belonged to a black girl, but this ass was a white sorority girl's ass. It was a round one. It was like: ka-pow! You know how in cartoons they have kids riding a turtle hold a fishing pole with a carrot tied to the end of it so the turtle will go? That's how it was for me. I just followed that ass, that round ass, all the way to my 45th lap.

I don't know who the chick was, but she was wearing one of those sweatpants with writing on the butt that said: "QUIT STARING AT MY ASS!" But I couldn't. I focused on that ass, watched it jiggle, read the writing over and over like it was the back of a cereal box, and just let it bring me to my finish line.

And that's the story of how I successfully ran 8 miles today.