The Stinging Nettle Saga

I have never felt so much like an annoying tourist.
“Wait,” I yelled. “Can you stop? I need a picture of that.”
“Excuse me, could you take a picture of me in front of this?”
“How about taking a picture of me in front of this?”
“Oh, that’s awesome! Please roll down the window!”
So it was no surprise to any of my Steel Gumbies team members when the van rolled to a stop, and I bolted with my camera throughout the Northwest Passage Ragnar Relay.
Saturday morning the beach flanked by forest was just too stunning to resist. Despite the fatigue in my legs (and the fact that I had to run my final 3.6 miles later that afternoon), I ran up the narrow highway to get a better view of the scene.
I heard the car coming, and as I always do, went off road.
I continued running until I felt what had to be tiny razor blades slicing my skin. After about four steps, I moved back onto the road and desperately scanned my legs for blood.
“What was that?!” I screamed to no one. The pain was breathtaking, but I couldn’t see any wounds on my legs. It burned and ached at the same time.
But I needed that picture. I finished the run to the top of the hill angrily debating with myself what I could possibly have come in contact with in that greenery.
I took the picture, and then scanned the plants. I saw nothing I recognized.
I looked at my legs again and noticed small, red welts appearing.
I ran back to my team, sweating from the pain.
“I think I ran into Poison Ivy,” I said. “I couldn’t see it, but I am getting welts.”
“Oh, no,” said Joshua Medaris, medicine man and botanist. “It’s Stinging Nettle.”
As everyone peppered me with cures that ranged from saturating my stings with urine to sitting in salt water, he walked into some nearby trees and came back with some leaves.
“Chew these into paste and put them on the stings,” he said matter-of-factly.
With an upset stomach, no sleep and another leg to run, I didn’t hesitate.
“No,” I said ungratefully. “I’m not chewing up leaves. I’ll just suffer.”
See, unlike the leaves, which were called Doc leaves, Motrin is ingested without chewing. I opted for a chemical solution because, I admit, I am a lazy, faithless wanna-be photographer masquerading as a runner.
I found that if I kept moving, the pain wasn’t as severe. This was probably super annoying to my new friends, but in addition to being lazy and faithless, I am a little selfish.
The only time the welts didn’t burn was when I was running that last leg. (Don’t worry, I didn’t have a discomfort free run. Worried about being dehydrated, I swilled four bottles of water. Let’s just say you could hear me coming…and that the urine cure became oddly more appealing as I sloshed along.)
It was there on that last leg, free from the burning for 40 minutes, that I wondered what it might take to make me quit. While I struggle to train consistently, I haven’t managed to quit a race yet.
I find that because I am always in some kind of discomfort, and some days even pain, running seems to just shifts the aches from one place to another. I’ve gone out with a headache and come home with a sore back. I’ve started with lead legs and finished with aching shoulders.
Still, I enjoy relatively good health, and I every step I take feels like a prayer of gratitude. Every time I struggle up a hill or through a head wind I whisper a little thank you.
I hope I never know what it would take to make me quit. I hope I never feel like I can’t do it. I might walk; I might shuffle; I might cry and question and curse.
But I would run through Stinging Nettle everyday to feel the freedom that comes from doing something that makes me so uncomfortable and so blessed.

The photo I had to have.

The Doc Leaves Joshua suggested I chew into paste.

Me in front of Deception Bridge.