So after the hoopla died down, the race organizer gave me my medal and took my chip away. Thank goodness... Phil went off to get restocked for his last loop. I assured him his last loop was going to fly by like lightning! I hoped it would.
The organizer told me to go step over by the camp fire and stay warm, it was 2 am and there were two early 100 mile finishers (yeah, they are not human) sitting by the fire with some others who had finished the 100K and the race director, a few friends and family supporters.
There were a couple of runners there who had been at the Do Wacka Do there ...I talked to them for a second, realizing I was in a little bit of a daze and needed to shake out of it. I was still sweaty from the run and needed to put on dry clothes before I cooled of in the night air. I knew Tala would be coming in soon, but still should change to keep from getting chilled. I hobbled over to my car and thought....."Return Text Messages"!.
I had seen Annette Blanton during my halfway point at the start finish and she emphatically insisted that I text when we finished to let her know we were OK. That was the first thing I did. I sat in my car and sent as many text messages as I could remember to send at that time. Then, I leaned out of the car and hobbled over to the showers that fortunately Eagle Bluff was kind enough to leave open for us. My hip flexer was killing me and I could not raise my right leg more than a half an inch off the ground. I got into the shower and attempted to rinse some of the trail dust off my feet to put on dry clothes. The water was semi warm and I did not want to spend too much time in there because moths were swarming around. I finally got dressed, put on yoga pants, a long sleeve shirt, and a long sleeve jacket with a hood. Droped my stuff by the car and hobbled over back toward the fire. As I was approaching the fire a nice young man came up to me and said. "That's quite a limp, are you OK?" I said, well my hip flexer hurts pretty bad. "Thats typical" he said, where ya heading?" I replied, "Over by the fire" . He said, "Do you want a chair?" I said "Yeah, I guess, I have a chair over there with that bag on it. You can just put that bag on that ice chest and I'll use that"
He was so nice, he got the chair, sat it by the fire and then asked me if I needed anything to eat. He brought me a cup of chili, and a bottle of water, the chili was delicious, I ate almost all of it. And I sat in the chair and stayed warm waiting for Tala to get in.
Not long after Tala rolled in, and after some initial confusion over a lost timing chip she finished shortly after I did. Apparently she had forgotten her chip when she changed her socks at the half way point. Then I unknowingly disrupted the scene by moving the bag off the chair. We searched for the chip in the dark for about 10 minutes then I finally went back to the race director and asked if anybody had turned in the chip, finding it on the ground. He looked at me and said "don't worry about it. Go to your hotel and sleep. If it turns up it turns up, if not....big deal" I was so thankful to hear that, I told Tala what he said and we packed up and drove back to the hotel.
Finally after showers and texting, I got to sleep at 4 am....dozing off I was wishing I had closed the curtains on the window...but I was too tired and sore to bother....Oh well,
It had been a good day.
And just in case anybody was wondering....other than a sore hip flexer, her is a summation of my injuries from the 17 hour journey:
one scratch on my left leg....
That's it. Not a single chaffed place, not a single blister (which I thank the new shoes for) not even a bug bite....one tiny scratch that I don't even remember getting....
Yeah, strange! :)
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