Quick report (starts the day before): 7PM: Hubby takes me out for a mexican dinner and I have a margarita. I don't drink but it really tasted good. So I have one more. (Stupid idea!!!) 3 AM: I wake up with a splitting head ache. I don't ever remember feeling this awful in college when we use to drink as our hobby. I take an Ibuprofen and watch the digital clock slowly increase in time.
4:37 AM: I wake up look at the clock and realize I've slept through my watch alarm. (Set for 4:25). I drag my sorry butt out of bed. I'm already dressed because I slept in my running clothes. Yes that is weird but it saves me about 10 min in the morning. The car was already packed so I'm out of the house by 4:45.
5:30 AM: I pull into Andrew's house. Transfer my junk from my car to his truck and we are off to the race. I still feel like crap. I eat some Scott's loaded granola bars (really good stuff) for breakfast.
7:30 AM: We get to the race. Drag our stuff (chairs, food, drink bottles, ...) up to the race starting line, get our numbers, eat some food, wait for start. I feel like I want a nap....and still feel like crap
7:55 AM: RD gives her race instructions. It starts off like this. "Do not die during this race and also do not pet the rattle snakes". Then she gives the standard directions, info on the course, don't litter, yadda, yadda.
8 AM: Race starts. Everyone takes off. We go less than 0.1 miles into it when there is a bottle neck. There is a very large log crossing the path. (there is another one about .5 away). The log wasn't hard to jump on and then over but it got very tiresome after the 17th or 18th time.
The race course itself was a 1.18 mile loop. The surface changed from single track, to paved road, to dirt road, to shale road, sand, wooden foot bridge, then to a massive 1/3 mile huge hill....that we had to summit again and again and again. Thanks to all of the scenery changes the loop never got dull or monotonous.
Unlike other years, we were very fortunate that the race started with overcast skies. The temps were only low 80's and standard 100% humidity. The clouds kept the temp low and humidity high for about 2 hours.
Loop 1: Sucks. I'm wondering why the heck I'm out there instead of sleeping in my bed. I take off my shirt after the first mile and decide to run in just my sports top.
The first two hours were spent with me struggling to get up that blasted hill and feeling like crap. Then suddenly the third hour hit. The sun comes out, temps go up and the humidity starts to drop. Better yet, I'm starting to feel good. I pick up my pace and notice that everyone else has dropped theirs. So now most everyone is going about the same pace give or take.
The fifth hour 1 PM. It is hot. Stank hot. Need I say more?
I finish up lap 23 and see Andrew sitting on the sidelines. He is bummed that the counters missed one of his laps. I talk him into walking one more lap just for the heck of it. We finish our loop and head to the food table. We still have time left in the race and we both contemplate doing one more lap. The cheese burgers smelled really good and our stomachs won over the pride of one more mile. The volunteers heckled us suggesting we take the hamburger on the trail with us. I'm thinking that is a good idea but Andrew declines. OK, I could use some company so we sat down and turned in our chip. Someone brings us a beer (sweet) and suggests we make a beer loop. Well, now that sounds like fun. I think we would have done that except we had just turned in our chip.
Sometime after 4PM: we pack up our stuff, change clothes, and start on our way back to middle GA.
Somewhere during the 8 hrs some guy dropped and needed an ambulence. Apparently he forgot the "do not die" rule of the course. He did get released from the hospital before the end of the race. (no, he didn't try and add more loops). The RD and volunteers pushed the ice after that happened. They started handing out small zip lock bags full of ice and sent everyone out with that. We are going to be doing that next year at Make it by midnight marathon. It really is a good way to keep runners cooled off.
I'm going to have to talk to the RD about a few things. They did chip timing for the loops. I wonder how much that cost and if we could pull it off in our race. They also gave out a kick butt canvas tote bag. I loved it. I need to find out where she got that. Mostly, I'd like to find out how she had enough $$ for all of this. They only had 50 folks at $40 a head. She had to have taken a loss unless she had a sponsor. They had such a great race that I'd like to duplicate it as much as reasonably possible in our home grown race.
I got home, morphed into mom mode, and passed out cold from exhaustion around 9:15PM last night. I feel much better today. I suffer from 2 blisters on my feet from not changing my socks sooner than mile 17.
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