Rhymes with "Mafed Triples"

About 3 miles in to Saturday's 22 miler in the confines of the lovely (and muggy as all get-out) Forest Park, as I bounded along the singletrack of the Wildwood Trail, detouring up and down steep Firelanes to give my quads some good, old-fashioned punishment working out, when an all too familiar tingling sensation began to clear its throat and alert me to some fascinating news:

"HI, I'M YOUR LEFT NIPPLE, AND I'M CHAFING!!!!!!"

Donning a brand new Brooks technical shirt (thankfully red and not white), I'd applied my ritualistic 4 pounds of Body Glide to various, ahem, "delicate" parts on my person, including said left protuberance, but the humidity and newness of the shirt were beginning to win the battle. So I was relegated to take action and do something I believed I'd never have the brass cojones to step forward and throw down:

I took off my shirt and continued my run.

I'm, how you Americans say? "Modest"? "Shy"? "Have horrible body image issues"?, so for me, this was tantamount to strolling onto Wrigley Field during the 7th inning stretch and dropping my pants. Of course, knowing my Cubbies, this would only help somehow.

I came across other hikers/runners here and there, mumbling to myself beneath my breath, "Watch out, here's comes an old dude who wants to be oggled" and "SASQUATCH ALERT", but after getting into the rhythm, I imagined my Celtic ancestry, tearing across the rolling, Irish greenery to deliver news of local battles, or that the latest batch of Jameson was now available. It felt...freeing? Me, pairs of shorts and shoes, and water bottle, and that was it. Primal. All I needed was a spear and a boar to chase after and I would have been whisked back a few thousand years.

By the run's end, I'd totally forgotten my state of near undress, and as I finished up and opened my car door, I caught the reflection in the window of the sweat-covered (and gnat-encrusted) warrior who'd traveled through the forest the last few hours and watched him smile back.