Oh, the shame of it! I'm going to have to resign from the Bad Girls of Running. I disgraced the sisterhood.

I really aspired to be "Bad", one tough Mama that people would think twice about messing with - Hey, my sister's got her black belt and drives a Harley!! I had a role model! (that's Linnie in the photo) I run with a big German Shepherd!

I set off this morning to run a usual 6 mi route, one I've run dozens of times before. It crosses through a London Underground Station, and the station staff just wave me through and open the gate. My station is one stop short of the farthest away from London you can ride on the underground, and its a quiet commuter stop, usually deserted mid-day.

Today when I waved at the guy in the ticket booth, this big mean bouncer-type-guy (with a Station Manager name tag), came out the back and told me I could not come though the station without a ticket! I made feeble objections along the line of "but I always do" and "but this is a public footpath", which did not convince him. Looping around the station means running under a narrow busy underpass and perhaps an additional 0.25 mile... but my sense of injustice was in the withdrawal of my entitlement!

That's when things went horribly wrong. I just said "Oh, all right", moaned... and went around. Why didn't I have the presence of mind to:
1) take his picture and send it with a brilliantly critical letter to the local paper
2) teach Nelly to knock down bad guys so I could race by him
3) at least have some clever, cutting and very Bad come-back to his parting snicker of "you're doing this to get more exercise, aren't you?"

I failed, miserably. Maybe I just needed the right T-shirt... Can I have another chance to be Bad?