A Warm, Sunny Day in January

After a harrowing ride the day before, resulting in a split top tube and a split... lip... I was not as fired up about my Sunday run as I wanted to be. A little after the fact, I figured out that I had hit six months sober without even realizing it, and since I had a big weekend on the calendar, I half thought about maybe doing it up big. Saturday was the 200K, and Sunday was a trail run where I was signed up for the 21K, but I had the option of upgrading to the 50. And as long as I was thinking about doing a 200K and a 50K, why not just do a long swim on Friday and round it out with greater than the distance of an ironman in all three sports all in one weekend. I did the swim (4400 yards) and the bike, but I'll spoil the surprise right now; I didn't do the full run.

The run was right in my own back yard, so I woke up late and took my time eating a big breakfast. Then I drove down to the Safeway (which has a Starbucks in it (Starbucks, please sponsor my blog) to pick up some last-minute essentials: coconut water, anti-chafe lube, and my coffee. I was cutting it a bit close on time, but I was only a few blocks from the start, right? What I hadn't thought about, however, was parking... and how I would have to park like everyone else. I suppose I could have parked at my house and walked down, but it was too late for that now and I didn't want to spill my coffee power walking down the hill. I found the registration table (as far from the start as you could get), and asked the guy what it would take to change distances. "I'm signed up for the 21K, but I'm still not sure which one I should do..." I told him.

"Aw, go for the 50K," he told me.

"Alright, let's do it!" I said. Then I thought better of it. "You know, I'm still not sure... what do I have to do to switch?"

"I have no idea, actually," he told me, even though he was working the table marked 'distance changes.' "Why don't you just run the 21K, and when you're done, you can decide if you want to keep going. If you do the 50, just tell them when you finish." Perfect!

I got my number on, the lube between my legs, and jogged to the start just in time to hear the starting siren and keep jogging. The trail went down to singletrack about 100 yards in and started climbing even before that. Because I was in the back, I (and everyone else) got stuck going the same pace as the slowest guy in the race. We hiked up the hill for about a mile, dashing around one person at a time whenever there was enough space on the trail. I knew that Sponsor was here, and I was hoping to catch up with her in order to have someone to keep me company and share the pretty views with. I was proud of how pretty Pacifica was, after all, and I never got a chance to share it with anybody.



Even at this slow pace, my legs were bursting with lactic acid, and I knew that I was fucked for the day. Right away I dropped the idea of doing the 50K, and just decided to enjoy the day and get through it however possible. It was the clearest sunny day I'd ever seen on these trails, and even though it was early in the morning, I was sweating in just a pair of spanky shorts and a tank top.

Up ahead, I had made my way up through the group to see that there was one guy who had let a giant gap open up in the trail in front of him. I was annoyed. Why didn't he get the fuck out of the way? Didn't he realize that there were people stuck behind him breathing down his neck? I got ruder and made my way up to him and finally around him. He looked like Gary Sinise on chemo. With Lieutenant Dan behind me, I now had to actually run up the hill. Ow, this hurt.


I came up on another barrel-chested guy who was running shirtless with compression socks and gaters on his legs. This guy's accessory distribution was all wrong. He didn't have so much as a visor or a watch anywhere above the waste, but he was wearing everything that he could cram on below the waist. He had the opposite distribution of body mass, with a giant, boxy torso and spindly chicken legs. It reminded me of something that one of the trainers at work had told me, "You can tell the gay guys who are sick (HIV+) because the steroids that they put them on to fight muscle wasting makes their abs stick out." He didn't look like a Castro muscle queen, but something about this guy's build gave me the heebie jeebies. Actually, I just kind of had the heebie jeebies. My mind was in that place: when you're running all out in the gym and then suddenly someone makes a loud sound with some weights and it explodes in your head so loud you think you're going to fall over.



Finally the singletrack trail opened up onto a wider (steeper) fire road. I was walk/running around people and they were walk/running around me. I came around a guy who had the gaunt body and moribund stride of an ultrarunner that didn't know when to take a rest day. It took me forever to get around him, and he was deep mouth breathing on my shoulder for what felt like an eternity. His mouth was agape and his big cheeks and sunken teeth reminded me of the pictures you see of mummies or mummified hikers that they find in the desert on CSI. I couldn't wait to get around him.

I finally shook off the Cadaver, and a guy came down the hill in the other direction, finished with the "out" portion of the out-and-back and now onto the "back." This was a particularly steep part of the trail, making it hard for even the elite guys (which he must have been to be so far forward in the pack) to look coordinated as they scrambled down the 15-20% grade, but this guy looked even wilder than that. He was wearing a shirt that said "run happy," but something about his gait made him lurch like a toddler just learning to walk. Was I seeing things? A runner behind me encouraged him, "run happy, my brotha'," and Run Happy Guy's response came in and out of my hearing like a wave. "MMMmmmmhuMMMmhuhhhmmmmmMmM." At the time I thought that I was really falling to bits and the fatigue was starting to affect my senses, but it turned out that Run Happy Guy really did have some sort of neurological disorder, and he was still out there running happy and way, way faster than most people. Well how could I possibly feel sorry for myself now?



I got all the way to the top of the mountain without running into Sponsor, and figured that she hadn't come to the race after all, so I turned around and decided I'd take the rest of the course at whatever pace occurred to me. A few minutes down the hill I finally spotted her. "I was in the bathroom line at the beginning!" she yelled to me. "I got a late start."

"Well I'm running at a snail's pace, so you'll probably catch me in a few," I said. I relaxed my pace as much as I could, and even stopped to pee behind a bush, but she never did catch me. Now that I was going back downhill, life was good. I was glad I had legs again (rather than them just being a source of pain and misery), and I bombed down the trail with my arms outstretched like an airplane. Actually, it felt really good to stretch out like that, my chest and triceps were deeply sore I'm guessing from riding on a busted bike for 3 hours.

Unfortunately, the hill ended and it was time to climb up the second hill. This is the shortest hill on the course, made up of grades that I usually find run-able. Not today. I continued my walk-run which looked a bit like "run 5 steps, walk 3" until I reached the top. This downhill wasn't quite so full of life. I could feel the bruised area in my shorts complaining from all the movement going on, and I was also badly chafed between my thighs where the shorts didn't cover. I knew that I was wiped because I could feel my core muscles working on the descent.

By the time I hit the only flat-ish section of the course--a half-mile slight uphill jog on a gravel path to the last hill--even running on this road was tough. It was like I was stuck between miles 16 and 20 of a marathon for 21 kilometers. I wasn't seeing any more ghosts, and I was still passing people on the uphills, but I was falling apart quickly.

The final hill is an endless series of almost 30 switchbacks that climbs about 1000 feet over 1.5 miles. Even though I've run this trail several times, I still never know when I'm getting close to the top. There's tall brush to either side of the trail, and the trail makes its way up the spine of a ridge in such a way that it always looks like the mountain must end after this next bend. Above me, below me, behind me, and in front of me I could hear runners talking about how hilly this course was. Yep, and I run it all the time, suckas! I thought. When you finally reach the top, there's an anticlimactic sweeping turn and down you go.

Normally this is a fun and non-technical downhill that you can take at the speed of gravity, but my legs had had it. I plodded down the hill as fast as my wooden legs could take me. I was uncomfortable deep inside, almost like cramping or when you take a deep breath at the wrong moment and you get a sharp, stabbing cramp in your side. It reminded me of the scene in Running on the Sun when they say that one of the Badwater runners' internal organs have started to chafe from rubbing against each other. I wasn't marathon tired where you feel like you've been beat up from the ground up, I was tired on a far deeper level from the bones out. Maybe I would be back to the endurance level I used to be at someday, but I wasn't there yet.

Finally I hobbled down out of the trail and to the finish line. It was my slowest half marathon ever: about 2:30, with 3764' climbed over that distance. I figured Sponsor was right behind me, so I grabbed fistfuls of corn chips and sugar cookie pieces and settled in to wait. And wait. And wait. What I didn't know was that she was signed up for the 30K, and wouldn't finish for another hour and a half (I finally gave up and left after an hour and 15 minutes).

While I was waiting, I got to watch other people finish. The female winner of the 30K race came flying through the finish line a few minutes after me sporting a t-shirt from a 100-mile race. She was short and muscular, built like a shit brick house just like me with slightly less fat. She had a forward-thrusting energy down to her facial features, even when she was standing still. A couple of heavyset women walked through the finish line wearing cotton t-shirts, Target sneakers, and fashionable sunglasses chanting "slow and steady wins the (9K) race!" Then there was a young couple that I'd seen out on the trail who could have been American Eagle models. She was wearing lime green compression socks, and he was wearing no shirt and a Camelbak which they'd both stopped to take turns sucking on the trail. When they came around the bend to the finish line, they both burst into grins and started sprinting to the finish, elbowing each other and giggling. They were having so much fun, it made me want to be them. For a moment I was a little sad that my girlfriend's knees are too fucked up to ride and her feet are too fucked up to hike these days, but that's a story for another time.

While I was sitting, one of the guys that I'd recognized as one of the front runners struck up a conversation with me. He was one of those hairless skinny straight white guys over 40 that looks like he's made of wax, but he sure was fast. "I saw you out on the course," I said. "I like your Hawaiian shorts!"

"Yeah, I try not to take myself too seriously..." he told me.

After we'd shot the shit for awhile and I was feeling more comfortable, I got up the nerve to ask him something that I'd always wondered. "So when guys like you run a course like this, do you run the whole thing? Like even the steep parts?" I asked.

"Yep, it's not a fast run, but it's a run."

Woooooow. There were quarter-mile sections of this courses that were over 15%. He looked at me, "You look like you could be built for something like this. You've got those short legs, so you can get a fast turnover." Yeah... well... no. "How do you like those compression socks?" he asked. I'd had to roll the compression socks down a couple of inches because they covered my short little legs up past the knees.

"I don't know, to tell the truth," I told him. "I'm wearing them today more to hold me together than out of faith that they actually work."

"Well do your calves knot up really bad after a long run? Do they prevent that?" he asked.

"What? Um, no, I guess I don't get that. I mean I get tired and stuff. Tight. But knots? No."

I went home and took an ice bath, then I took a hot epsom salt bath. With the chafe between my legs and my split... lip... it took a good several minutes to be able to submerge myself in the water and I yelped and whimpered like a hurt animal, but finally I was successful in submerging myself. That night I got a massage from our massage therapist at work. I asked her why my experience with foam rollers and massages hadn't been as painful as other people had described. But when she hit my IT band and I screamed, I felt what all those people were talking about. "I think it's because you never sit still. Your muscles never get a chance to knot up like other people's," she told me. Yeah, well I was a hurt unit. I crawled into bed after my massage and spent every free second I could find the next day asleep.

I think I deserve a recovery week.

Cranmore Hill Climb Race Report

Man, it was a shitty week. The chances of getting my contract renewed at work started to look bleaker and bleaker as the week wore on, culminating in my boss announcing at the staff meeting on Friday, "We have some people who have been with us for a long time that will be leaving us: Claire, who started with us in October and was instrumental in the MMH project..." And that's how I found out I was going to be getting a summer vacation after all. This, right after being informed that the 80+ comp hours that I racked up working 50-60 hour weeks for 3 months over the winter were no good. I was capped at at 37 comp hours, didn't we ever tell you? So it turns out that you're not getting paid for all those vacation days you've already taken after all. Not to mention, the icing on the cake: an innocent comment which provoked a malicious and sarcastic comment from said (incompetent) boss.

Plus there have been the thunder storms. Every day last week it was sunny and beautiful right up until the moment I started leaving the office, when the thunder clouds would roll in just in time for my walk to the train, then the buckets of rain would start falling just as I got off the train. Every. Single. Day. It was like a not-too-subtle movie in that You Suck at Life scene.


But I'm not here to bitch about my other life, I'm here to tell you about how I climbed a mountain. You may notice that this post has a slightly different narrative style to other posts. This is because I'm writing it in a big, fat hurry and not really bothering to try to think of fun stories to tell. I'm sure I'll have lots to talk about when I'm on my forced vacation. For now you get moody, stream-of consciousness writing.

When Gadfly Thom told me about the race series where you ran up ski mountains in New Hamshire including Mt. Monadnock, Loon, Cranmore, and the granddaddy of them all, Mt. Washington, it sounded like fun. That was back when I was running a lot and gas still cost under $3.50/gallon. But then I wasn't selected for the lottery for Mt. Washington, and then I looked at a map. I thought New Hampshire was only about 30 minutes away. Well it turns out that there's more to New Hampshire than just the Massachusetts border. There are parts of New Hampshire that go WAY the fuck up there. When I saw that I was going to have to drive 3 hours to the Presidential Range, the idea of running up a ski mountain lost its novelty. And did I mention I'd had a crappy week at work?

I got a lousy night's sleep, woke up at 3:15 am to be on the road an hour later to get there in time for the 8:00 start. Not only was I wrong about WHERE Mt. Cranmore was, but also WHEN the race was. When I got there there was no one in the parking lot. Know why? Because the race started at 9:00. What an idiot! You would think I would have looked closer at the web site when I almost showed up for this race last week instead of this week.

At about 8:15 I left the lodge and started trying to look busy outside by the starting line. It was a cloudy day, which, in the mountains, means that the clouds are only about 50 feet above your head. At about 8:30 it started raining. It wasn't raining hard, just a few drops. It was the kind of rain that you can pretend isn't there, and it won't really insist on making your clothes wet or anything. Then, at 8:45-ish the thunder started and the skies opened up. The runners who weren't already out warming up huddled under a tent next to the starting line while a river appeared at our feet where there had been dry ground before. People started trading stories about people they knew that had been struck by lightning. Then, at 9:00 a woman with lots of stories about being struck by lightning said, "Oh my god, he's serious!" I looked over towards the starting line and some lunatic with a bullhorn was trying to get people lined up for the race.

I was going to take pictures, but guess what? My camera broke! Had I mentioned that this had been a shitty week?

So as we started scrambling up the hill, it was still pouring and thunder was still rumbling through the mountains. I learned very, very, very quickly that morning how steep a ski mountain really is. For some reason I equated skiing with biking, and since I run up hills that are hard to ride up all the time, I thought that this would be the same. Wrong! The course had us zig-zagging up the mountain, with average grades around 20%, reaching up into the high 30's and 40's, and even hitting 50% at one point. We climbed 1,100 feet in 1.5 miles. And remember, this was a ski mountain, so it was all on trails, no pavement. And in the rain, the mountain had turned into a giant blob of pudding. Everywhere we went you could see footprints 3 feet long and several inches deep from where people had slipped in the mud.

The main trails were grassy areas, but we were mostly running across those (not up), through the glades in between. Actually, I'd take the deep mud and roots over the slippery granite and grass any day. Some of the sections were even runable. Then we came up on the top of a chairlift. I almost said out loud, "That wasn't so bad!" but then we ran around a bend in the trail and saw the course markers going up a steep, steep rout through the trees that almost required you hands AND feet scrambling. And right after that, that's when the course went straight up the black diamond.

If you don't ski and don't know, trails are classified as green circles (beginner), blue squares (intermediate), and black diamonds (expert), mainly based on steepness. This one stayed pretty solidly between 25 and 45% for half a mile the whole rest of the way up (except for the few yards where you had to walk horizontally across the wet, slippery granite which dropped off the edge of the mountain into a cloud). I mean, this would have been very, very steep if it were a set of stairs, and hills are harder than stairs. This was skin-your-nose-on-the-ground-2-steps-in-front-of-you steep. This sucked. I was walking up the hill and STILL my hamstrings were burning so bad I wondered if I would have to stop and take a breather. I wouldn't have been the only one.

Finally, FINALLY I got to the top where there was a photographer waiting to ambush us: soaked, exhausted, covered in mud, in the middle of a thunderstorm, at the highest point for miles. "SMILE!" she called out.

Then we ran down. They were kind enough to put the rout back down on a green circle, which was only about an average of 15% grade the whole way down. The trail looked like a riverbed (I mean a real river, not just one created by a flash flood), so the ground was loose and sandy and covered in large cobble-sized rocks. My feet got so hot from the friction of trying to slow myself the whole way down, that it actually felt GOOD to step in puddles.

I got to the bottom (roughly 5 K) in around 48 minutes: the slowest 5K I have ever run in my life. Then I ran off for the second loop.

On the second loop it had at least stopped raining, which meant I was feeling HOT. My clothes were still soaked, though, and I spent the whole second loop (and most of the first actually) with one hand on my waist trying to keep my pants from falling down under the weight of the water they'd taken on. My split for the second loop was actually nearly even with the first, and I felt better physically, if you can compare shades of agony. I finished in 1:34:29, the 22nd of 33 women. Total elevation gain/loss 2889' in 7.08 miles. "What'd you think?" Thom asked me at the finish.
I gave him a good, long look. "It sucked!" I said.

Then I got lost-ish on th way home and drove like 50 miles out of my way in the middle of bumfuck New Hampshire where there wasn't so much as a gas station to stop at. The only good thing: when I actually found gas it was UNDER $4.00 A GALLON! It was like finding a leprechaun. Only this leprechaun was the kind that doesn't give you any gold, and takes your lucky charms at the end of the rainbow. Without thinking I filled up my tank and overdrew my checking account.

Actually, it wasn't all bad. On the course I could have been heard to make jokes like:
"I hope you guys didn't wear your dress shoes today!" (running through ankle-deep mud in a glade).
"I'm faking!" At the top of the mountain when the photographer commented on how I was already smiling.
"No! I just want to go home!" With another smile, to the guys at the water stop the second time I reached the summit. This got a laugh out of them.
"You know, it's kind of nice, once you're soaked through and your shoes are filthy, there's nothing much you can do, so you might as well just run through the mud puddles." At a particularly muddy patch on the second ascent.

So I guess it wasn't all bad.

Oh, did I mention that I biked 108 miles in under 6 hours the day before? Today my quads are TOAST. So what did I do to fix it? I did exactly what you're NOT supposed to do when your quads are wrecked: I rode some hill repeats.

The end

Who's this Stu guy, I'm going to kick his ass!

Today in my endless parade of races, Stu's 30k came up. What... the... fuck?! I'd heard this course was hilly, but this, I was not expecting this. No wonder they put NO information on the web site about the course, elevation profile, or even how to get there. If they did, I'm quite sure no one would be stupid enough to show up. But wait, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's rewind to the beginning, Saturday afternoon:

I was in a good mood. I'd managed to get out of the office after working only 5 hours and was excited about actually being able to get in a long ride, although it would not be as long as I had planned. I was in a good mood... that is, until I saw that I had a flat. Really, how does a tire go flat on a trainer? After a barrage of swearing, I took the whole damn thing apart, changed the tube, and spent another half an hour trying to get it seated right on the trainer again. Next time I buy something on ebay, I'm going for the second cheapest option.

My mood was only slightly dampened by my baffling technical difficulties. This was going to be a good ride. Not only was I fired up from Bob Almighty's Ironman finish in New Zealand (and inspired to work my booty off to achieve my goal of beating ONE of Bob's personal worsts someday), but my Netflix queue had finally hit Hell on Wheels. I rode like a demon, mixing variable gearing sets in with 30 and 60 minute time trials. Watching those Tour de France riders floating up hills like they were flat, and looking like they were born with bikes growing out of their butts gave me the strength of 10 men. When my energy was flagging, the sight of their astoundingly toned butts peeking through shredded shorts after a fall was enough to make me push even harder. I want a Tour de France butt! When I finally tore myself off the bike after 3 hours, I was feeling GREAT. I promised myself I would tape every stage of the Tour de France this summer and ride the whole thing in my living room. Now I see that that probably will not happen, but I raring to go then. And, and you know what else?! I was going to run like an animal tomorrow at Stu's 30k, too! This was the beginning of a new all ass kicking, all the time Claire, I could feel it! After writing in my journal for about an hour about how from now on until forever I was going to kick ass harder than ass has ever been kicked before, I went to bed to get ready for 30 kilometers of carnage. I was quite sure that carnage was going to be other people, not me.

The race start wasn't until 11:00, so I had time to do 30 minutes of yoga to get some of yesterday's muck out of my legs before a breakfast of champions. As I was picking up my number (and not so pretty t-shirt), Gadfly Thom spotted me and we shot the shit while waiting for the start... And then, my nemesis walked in. I had fought it out neck-in-neck for 9 miles in a trail race with this never-say-die adversary in November. I had finally passed him half a mile from the end only to get out-kicked 10 yards from the finish. It was, without a doubt, the hunch-backed septuagenarian himself, GRANDPA! Oh, it was on now. Grandpa was going to be the first victim of my new, bloodthirsty badass Claire persona.

I pointed Grandpa out to Thom. "That guy's going down!" I said. "You see him over there? The old guy with the hump standing by the pillar? His ass is grass!" I then told Thom about our epic battle, how I'd been hanging on behind him for miles before he tripped and fell head over heels, which is when I made my first attack, then how he passed me on an uphill and how I was chasing him down for miles and miles. Then I told Thom about the heartbreaking end where I finally passed him, only to lose ground again on an itty, bitty little incline leading back to the finish.
"Oh, that guy's an avid trail runner," Thom said. Thom's done like every race in New England about 20 times each. "You'll get to see him again at Eastern States and a couple of other races this summer." Game on, tampon! So this race now had a purpose: me against Grandpa, and I was out for some 70-year-old blood.

The start was uneventful. We lined up, there were no announcements, no national anthem, just a whistle and everyone started running. I caught up to Thom again for a second and made sure to say loud enough for anyone who was interested to hear me, "I did a 3 hour hard ride yesterday. I'm just getting that excuse out now, just in case I need it later." I wouldn't need it later, I thought, I was made of 130 lb of nothing but lean, mean, running machine.

Right after setting up my excuse, I let Thom go, and a guy named Tim asked me what I was training for. For the next 5 miles or so I ran with Tim chatting about triathlons and moving into topics that became more and more personal: relationships, how badly we wanted Tour de France butts, what the texture of goos reminded us of... At the first mile Tim looked down at his Garmin, "Right about 9 minutes," he said. Oops, that was a little bit fast for an 18.64 mile course, but hey, I had company. "Or do you not want me to tell you?" Tim asked.
"Actually, I prefer to not know," I said. I wanted to surprise myself with the lightning-fast miles the new badass me was going to pull out. We continued to chat up a pretty steep hill. I tried to ignore it and continue to keep Tim talking to get my mind off of it.
"Well, we're climbing now, so I understand if you don't want to talk," Tim said. Damn, there went my distraction. This was some hill. Was it ever going to end? Over every ridge and around every turn, it became very clear that no, it was not ever going to end.

When I finally let Tim go I latched on to another woman who had mentioned she'd done two ironmans. I listened to her banal advice on ironman ("don't have a time goal", well yeah, I'd heard that before, thanks), and then triathon in general, and then marathons and played stupid to keep her talking and keep my mind off these god damned hills. What the hell WAS this?! For every 10 minutes we climbed, we got about 1 minute of gradual descent before we had to grind up another hill. No, really, I'm not kidding, these grades went over 20% in places and hovered in the 10+ region for extended periods of time. Well, that is, if the Garmin profile can be trusted. Oh my god, please keep talking, lady! I thought. "So, was Florida... hot?" I asked.

Finally the Veteran dropped back around mile 8 and I was left to brave it on my own. I was already feeling decidedly less bloodthirsty, and my legs were telling me that what I was trying to make them do was seriously fucked up. But let's take a break from my suffering for a moment to discuss the course. The snow from earlier in the weekend had passed, and it was a bright, sunshiny day. The course was one giant loop around the Wachusett Reservoir, and the scenery was absolutely beautiful. It was that rural New England kind of beautiful where there were great expanses of white snow everywhere that would blind you if you'd forgotten your sunglasses, a sprinkling of quaint-looking farm houses, and really great lake views all the way around. The temperatures were actually pretty warm, somewhere in the high 30's, which is perfect running weather when you've gotten used to some of the shit we've had to put up with this winter. Oh, and there were 20 mph winds. There was that too. At one point we crossed a land bridge across the lake and I thought that if I spread my arms too wide, I would get picked up and swept away.

So, like I said, I was hurting. I berated myself for doing a race tired... again. I always get through it, so I always forget how much it hurts. But it sucks, now I remembered. I was already into survival mode running, and it was only mile 10. I caught myself, just for a moment, getting ready to feel sorry for myself, but then I thought of a phrase that just recently re-entered my vocabulary when I heard it for the first time in a long time the other day (not aimed directly at me). "Harden the fuck up, Claire," I told myself. Savage competitors do not feel sorry for themselves.

Luckily, half way through mile 12 the hills laid off a bit. Which is not to say that they went away, they just flattened out a bit. After mile 14 the miles actually started going by pretty quickly, but not in that "oh my! we've gone 8 miles already" kind of way, it was more like the "I don't remember a single thing from the last 10k of that marathon" kind of way. For about half a mile I could hear breathing and footfalls right over my shoulder. It was extremely disorienting and distracting, having someone else's rhythm in my head like that. Come around, idiot, come around, I thought. Finally, after I thought that for sure listening to her footsteps was going to make me lose my balance and fall over, she came up next to me. "I hope I'm not driving you nuts," she said, "it's just that you're going the perfect pace."
"You kind of are," I admitted. "But that's okay," I added quickly. I could smell a distraction, and didn't want to scare her off. Alas, she pulled on ahead of me, faster than I could force my legs to go.
I caught her again later and forced her into conversation with me for over a mile (and over an enormous hill) at mile 16, which probably saved my life. "My butt and hamstrings are so sore, I'd like to have them amputated," I admitted to her. We'd started lurching over hills again, and I was having none of it. Iron Matron had tried to warn me, but had I listened? Nooooooooooooooo! " Are you doing Stu's? If you do I can't WAIT to hear your report of that one. It's a tad hilly--.:)" she'd said. In case you haven't figured it out, that smiley face at the end means "it's more than just a tad hilly". And here I was, 18 miles into this fucking thing, and still struggling over hills that felt like they were vertical. My Garmin beeped a couple of times while I was still running. It's only set to pause when I've gone under a 17-minute mile. That steep. A couple of times I had to walk. Only for a few seconds, but there was just no way.

At the bottom of the last hill there were volunteers letting us know that there would be no more climbing today. I thought for sure that it would just be a block or two, then we'd make a turnoff and that would be the end. "How much longer?" I asked one of the volunteers after I'd gotten over the top and caught my breath.
"About a mile," he said. WHAT?!?!?! I repeat: What... the... fuck?!

You would think it couldn't get any worse, but you'd be wrong. As I ran the last 400 yards to the finish line the biggest gust of wind I'd felt since the causeway blew in, head on, and fought with me every inch of that last quarter mile. I'd hoped to break 3 hours, but stumbled in in 3:04:03. Any attempts I had to sprint in and break 3:04 were foiled by the damn acceleration-sucking wind.

I promise you, I didn't even walk more than a few seconds. All that suckage is hills.

18.7 Garmin miles, and 2,550 feet of total ascent behind me, and I was beat. I hobbled into the school where people seemed intent on blocking my path. Does that happen to you? Where you're concentrating so hard on staying upright that walking around someone who's standing still in your path seems impossible? Then I got stuck behind some kids in the food line and they had to pick up and inspect every single bag of Fritos and every package of Hostess Snowballs before moving on. Then they had to ask the lesbian lunch lady with 13 hoops in each ear how many times her ears were pierced. I was tired, but not so tired I couldn't muster up the strength to throw a 7-year-old into a vat of boiling clam chowder.

As I tried to swallow giant hunks of bagel and a bag of oyster crackers I chatted with Thom about his race. He'd finished eons earlier, and had still been beaten by a 65-year-old guy. His friend, who was even faster, had been beaten by a 75-year-old woman. "Sucks, doesn't it?" I said. I could see Granpa milling around the cafeteria, snacking and hob-nobbing. I'll have to wait until tomorrow to know if I gave him the ass whooping that was 4 months overdue. I was too tired to go get up in his face to scream, "3:04:03, what do you have to say to THAT, you hunched-over motherfucker?!" And anyway, if I had to run away he'd come after me, I wasn't so sure I could out-kick him this time.

When I started shivering so badly I was burning my hand with my sloshing hot cocoa, it was time to go home. It was almost 4:00 anyway, and I needed a shower and some real food. But I didn't have return directions printed up, and I seemed to make the wrong decision at every unmarked fork (of which there were many) between the lake and my house. I didn't really have any huge adventures while I was lost, but do you know how much that sucks when you're hungry and tired and just want a shower? It sucks.

~Epilogue~

I checked the results on Coolrunning.com. There I am, in 268th place in 3:04:03.77. Then scroll down. Scroll waaaaaaay down. Scroll down 33 places and sixteen minutes and thirteen point fifty-four seconds later (16:13.54), there's Grandpa in 301st place with a time of 3:17:17.31. Grandpa is TOAST!