Marathon Journey: Day 20

Fartlek run.

You read that right. Especially if it sounded like “fart lick” in your head, and especially if you laughed.

So a fartlek is a word that means “speed play,” and just so happens to also sound like licking farts. What you do is run and then mix in some speedy stuff to get used to “changing gears” as you run.

There are just some things that have terrible names. Why do we call this “fartlek” instead of “speed play”? It’s the same number of syllables, but one doesn’t contain the word “fart.”

Because seriously, how many other words we have include “fart”?

I looked it up on a web site that I assume exists only to provide for sayings like “You can’t spell farthing without fart.”

Farthing was one. Farther and various iterations of that were in there. And then Farts, Farting, Farted. Conspicuously absent was Farter. As is usually the case. The farter comes in, farts, then fartleks right the fuck out of there.