From an empty fridge to safety pins, there are certain things that only annoy runners. What bugs you the most?

The joy of a good track session or some sweet single track time is never to be outweighed by such things as an empty fridge after your run, but if you’re not slightly irritated by the five things below, you’re more of a zen master than most runners.

1) Running on empty cupboards

You’ve just run the session of your life. That last 400m effort was offensively fast and you barely managed to stay conscious on your cool down. You’re dreaming of all the food you’re going to eat when you get home.

Then you open the fridge and there’s just a month old tub of coleslaw and one of those bags of salad that’s never opened. The cupboard has some dry lentils but they’ll take hours to cook.

When it comes to running and fuelling, a little planning goes a long way, but forget, and it’s a stagger to an all-night supermarket and eating half your groceries on the way around. A supermarket is a dangerous place to be when you’re ‘rungry’.

A hotel buffet can end up as a danish pastry massacre.

2) The black hole of safety pins

Most races give you safety pins for your number. These build up somewhere and each of us probably owns thousands upon thousands of the things. Yet when it comes to a race without safety pins provided there are ZERO anywhere.

Darting around minutes before the start with one rusty safety pin you found in the glove box of your car, asking all and sundry if they have any spares.

Where do all the safety pins go? Answers on a postcard.

3) Last season’s cross country vest

It’s been the muddiest and wettest cross country season yet. You chuck all your wet kit into a carrier bag and then promptly forget it’s existence. Fast forward a couple weeks, months or a whole track season and your favourite club vest has it’s own ecosystem.

The same can happen when you forget to take a number off post-race. You might lose the safety pins that time, but the sweat and tears combined will rust horrible marks into your top. At least you’ll know where to pin it next time.

4) The bus run

The 6am club can be an important, nay vital, part of marathon training. Up early before work to get those easy miles in before a rushed breakfast. You’ve managed to stop sweating, change into your work clothes and are en route to the bus stop.

Then it comes round the corner. It could be the earlier bus running late or yours running early. You can’t take the chance so the sprint is on. Tired legs take a few seconds to get into stride, especially as you’re wearing brogues/heels now. Surely the driver has seen you?

You get close enough to see the contempt of the unfit and an unhappy busman’s face as it turns to a grin.  Trying to style it out as if you weren’t running for the bus, but just stretching the legs, you wait for the next one.

Then the sweating starts. Your body was already a bit warm from the morning’s run and now it’s just like someone turned the taps on. FML.

5) Bloopy nips

Last, but by no means least, chaffing. You see plenty of newbies at the London Marathon with the trademark thin red line from each nipple, but it doesn’t happen to an experienced runner like yourself… does it?

A new t-shirt, a particularly humid day or just a scream protest from your neglected teats, it can be halfway through a race and you start to feel them rubbing. The armpits are getting sore too. You thought you were over this and had decided vaseline wasn’t necessary.

Even worse between the legs. You’ve worn those shorts one time too many on sweaty days without a wash. The salt crystals have teamed up against you and suddenly you’re running like John Wayne.

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