Day 4,349—Today’s Run and Part I of the Thunder Kiss 100—

 

        This morning I went to the cemetery, and I felt like being outside in the sunshine for a while. Even though it was cold, the sun was shining brightly. This cold snap makes no sense at all. I have already put away a lot of my winter running clothes. All I could think about while running was how I was going to accomplish everything I wanted to do over spring break. The result page still hasn’t been updated for the Thunder Kiss, which is a small detail because I know my time and how I placed, but I want to see how many people finished and what time the winner got.

Thunder Kiss 100 Part I: Before the Race

        I left 30 minutes later than I had planned to go to Travis’s house because he offered to drive. I was just starting to feel good about the trip when I realized I forgot my poles!!! How on earth, with everything I remembered, did I forget my poles? I turned around and headed back home. Once we were both together and on the road driving to Alabama, I began to relax a bit. The first four hours of the drive went by quickly, but then Travis suddenly felt exhausted, and I had to take over driving. I didn’t mind driving. It was a nice break, and his car was easy to drive, but when we got closer to Sterrett, Alabama, we suddenly hit standstill traffic, and I missed a turn. We decided to go to the campground before packet pickup. We camped in Oak Mountain State Park because it was the closest to the race. 

        When we got to the entrance of the park, we had to drive 5 miles to the campground. The park was gorgeous and had every type of outdoor activity. We set up quickly and left for the packet pickup. It was outdoors, and even though there weren’t any signs, it was easy to find. On the way back to our tents, the sun was setting, and I took a picture of the reflection of the sky on a lake in the park. I made sure to stretch before I went to sleep. The race didn’t start until 7 a.m., so getting up on time was easy. I had eaten so much food the day before the race. I had most of a sandwich from Vegan Deli, almost an entire bag of Impossible Nuggets, and a meal from Chipotle, and that’s not including snacks.

        We were stressed about getting there on time because we were going to have to leave through an alternative method because the entrance closer to the start of the race was closed. We got there with over an hour before the race, so we were able to find a good parking spot and set up an area to put our stuff without too much trouble. I was surprised to see almost no other runners doing this, which was a good thing because there was almost no room. I found out the name of the race comes from a song, and so do all the names of the spots in the park. You would see a sign that said, “Don’t Stop Believin’” and other classic tunes. It looked like there were between 50 and 70 people there. The race director said that this was the largest gathering ever at Double Oak Park. I didn’t realize how new the park was, but during the race, I talked with a local about the history. The other race director said it was a 20- or 21-mile loop, which scared me. Travis had said the GPS file was 20.6, so I was getting used to the idea that we would finish at 103 miles, but thinking about finishing at 105 miles deeply upset me. It might not seem like a huge difference, but think about how long this race might take already. Travis had said he was planning for a 30-31 hour finish time, which would mean we wouldn’t be getting back home until midday Monday at the earliest.