I don’t love running inside.

 My view from my treadmill is the inside of my office closet, and it’s just not very interesting. I can sort of watch my iPad, or I can watch my feet (probably the better option so I don’t trip and go flying across the room), but it’s really not something entertaining to watch. But there is one wonderful thing about running inside: proximity to the bathroom.

Unfortunately for me, it appears that I have become a running pooper.

It doesn’t seem to matter how far I’m going: 10 minutes into a run, and I always need a pit stop. So far, for this iteration of my running career, this hasn’t been a big issue, considering the toilet is 18 steps from my treadmill (yes, I counted). But, at some point, the weather will cool down, and I will want to take my runs outside.

Time of day does seem to matter. My intestines don’t really wake up until later in the day, so early morning runs don’t require poopy pit stops.

Running poops aren’t just a human thing either.

I almost never take my dogs running with me because they’re terrible runners. One dog decides her legs don’t work after 2 miles, and the other runs back and forth in front of me, like she actually wants to trip me.

(It’s a murder plot, put together by a dog with a very little brain.)

The few times I have taken my dogs with me, the running poos hit them too. And not just one: each dog will poo, like, 6 times in a 2 mile run. They stop suddenly, and of course it always happens mid-stride. I nearly plow into the dog who isn’t pooping, and I usually end up tripping over the leash. It’s not graceful.

I have to bring a ton of poo bags, because, like I said, these dogs are pooping machines when I take them running. And I want to be a good neighbor, so those have to come home with me. Have you ever tried running with a stinky, warm bag of THAT in your hand? Trust me on this: DON’T. If I happen to run on garbage day, I have been known to slip my… baggage into the nearest full trash can if no one is watching. (But again, I don’t run with the dogs very frequently, so if you live in my neighborhood, don’t suddenly start stalking me on runs please!)

That time I didn’t bring bags…

My dog Rosie Posie has been a part of my running journey pretty much since the day we brought her home. She joined our crew 2 days after my older son’s first birthday, and I started running that same week. (It was a memorable week.) She was a gangly-legged 2 month old puppy when she first came home, just as much of a baby as my son, and they were best buddies from the start. Once she was well-enough leash-trained to stay by my side for a walk, I decided to see how she would do on a run. Remember, she was a high-energy, long-legged mess of puppy, so, I thought, if any dog would be a good running buddy, she would be the one.

It was a disaster. Rosie was all over the place, sniffing everything. She isn’t usually a nose-driven dog, but on that run, she might as well have been a bloodhound! All her training to stay to one side and not try to kill me went out the window in favor of all the delightful smells.

Then the running poos hit. Rosie stopped in the dead center of an intersection and left the largest, smelliest, least solid dog poo I have ever encountered. Just plop, right in the middle of the road.

I was stymied. I didn’t have poo bags with me, but THAT wasn’t going to go in a bag anyway! I looked around furtively; it wasn’t technically on anyone’s property, and it was before daybreak. These were the days before everyone had Ring cameras on their porches, and that particular intersection didn’t even have a streetlight nearby. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought it was a safe bet that nobody had seen Rosie take that particular dump, and even if they had, what were they going to do about it?

Rosie and I cut our run short at that point and went straight home. I never took her running on that particular street ever again. When I ran by the next day, the poop was still there, but it had been run over a few times. No one ever said anything to me about it, so I think I got away with it.

Why do running poos happen?

There are many reasons running poos happen, according to Runner’s World (here’s the article if you want more detail). I think the most likely reason for me (and for my dogs) is because running gets everything moving, bowels included. I wonder if the reason I see more runner poos on the treadmill as opposed to my outdoor runs is because my treadmill runs have more of a vertical component than my street runs (described as vertical oscillation in the Runner’s World article). I definitely notice it if I try to read something while I run, so maybe that’s why I get the runner poos?

Stay tuned! As the weather cools down, I will test this theory! I’m a scientist in my non-runner life, so I smell an experiment coming!