Picture this, you are fighting your way through the second lap of a 1500, your thighs are burning, your heart is pumping like crazy, and your lungs are working overtime as you struggle to maintain a consistent breathing pattern. Your body is exhausted, and as you are racing around the track with your teammates cheering you on and the crowd picking up noise, adrenaline triggered by the "fight or flight" response is coursing through you. During this response, your body actively shuts down or limits the functioning of organs and systems that are not vital to your goal at hand, aka the fighting or the "flighting". This means that your metabolism slows down and your endocrine system stops secreting nonessential glands for the time being. This response may also mean, in some cases, that your bladder and kidneys are not able to function as securely as before being put under the stress your body is now enduring.....and I think we all can guess what happens then - you pee your pants.
You have another lap and a half left of your race and are now slightly self-conscience that everyone in the stands is laughing at you and your insufficient bladder abilities, which of course is not accurate seeing as probably a total of three people even noticed the wet stain forming between your legs. Though you might feel embarrassed about peeing your pants, this is a much more common occurrence than those not accustom to meets might expect. For instance, I will always remember when my friend came to watch her first cross country meet. As soon as I finished my race and gulped down some water she came over to me and exclaimed, “I saw four people pee their pants!” I just laughed and continued drinking my water and recovering.
I learned all of the mechanisms behind the fight and flight response in Ap Biology my sophomore year, but at that point I had never experienced peeing my pants, and I still haven't, but I have certainly witnessed it many times. Peeing during a meet, though uncomfortable and embarrassing, is really not something to be ashamed of. In fact it can be seen as a badge of honor because you know that you gave it your all out on the track and pushed your body to the extreme.
Like I mentioned before, I myself have never peed my pants in a race, but I feel like the main reason behind that is the fact that I am a nervous pee-er who goes to the bathroom no less than six times while at a meet before my race. Therefore I have very little left in me to actually pee out if duty calls during a run. Many of my friends also have this affliction, but nature does show itself every once in a while none the less.
In these instances where one does pee their pants, you can only hope that dark pants are being worn. For track, my team wears black spandex. When someone comes over and complains that they peed their pants, I have never ones noticed it while they were running! No one, I hope, is specifically looking for people who have peed, so hardly anyone notices in these instances. Cross country however, is a different story for my team because we wear sickly lime green shorts that become much darker very easily in the presence of liquid. But like I said, peeing your pants at a meet is nothing to be worried about, and most everyone has seen it before and knows that it happens to the best of us, so just brush it off, be excited about your race, and march proudly to the bathroom.
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