Day 4,478—Faster than Wednesday and The Vero Beach Octopus 100 Part X: After the Race—

 

Start time: 7:36 a.m.

Weather: Mid 60s, wind 1.8 mi/h, Humidity 82%

     I struggled to get out of bed, but once I was outside, I first saw three guys who looked like they worked construction running ahead of me. At first they were walking, but then something changed, and they were sprinting. I wasn’t going fast because I was just getting started, so I was a little behind them. When I saw the ladder in the center of the road, the scene made sense to me, but before that I was just so confused about what was happening.

        I wanted to get my average time down as close to 8:30s as possible. I remember running 8-minute miles on Wednesday and it feeling normal, not like I was straining myself. At first I was straining myself to go under 9 at all, but once I was running around a 7:30 and then slowed down, I was able to hit that 8:15 area without nearly as much effort.

        I would love to credit my hard work and dedication to this sudden final reversal of my slower pattern, but the weather is certainly a factor, as well as now that I am finally dealing with less pain. I need to go back to the acupuncturist to capitalize on this reversal in fortune. Only two weeks left, and then I am back to work again! But I will have some time until the kids come back. Also, this will be my first year in 5 years that I am not working and going back to school, so that is worth being happy about.

The Vero Beach Octopus 100 Part X: After the Race

        The guy who finished shortly after me, I talked to him for a while, and we took showers around the same time. I had to wait a few minutes to take a shower. There were two showers, and we were both waiting for them. I can't stress enough how amazing it was to be able to take a shower in a private space that had both water pressure and cold and hot water.

        Then I slowly walked to my tent, and I was bolstered, actually, to start tearing down my tent. A guy and his wife, who were close to me, helped me get things ready to move to my car, and they weren’t the only people to offer to help me! It was the help I needed when I needed it, and it was so reassuring. The guy and I were talking for a minute, and he was super nice. He said that he ate only meat or some kind of diet like that, which I thought was crazy, but he said he didn’t use the bathroom once during the race, which seems unhealthy, but what a time saver! And I never want to tell other people what to eat, but I encourage them to listen to their bodies.

        This was working out perfectly! I was leaving the Octobase still in a good mood and not that sleepy! I drank another high-caffeine drink and headed out to find a Burger King. I went to one that told me they wouldn’t start making lunch until 10:30, which was at 10:18. It didn’t seem that wild in concept, but Burger King's whole thing was that they weren’t like McDonald's, which had these cutoffs. I had ordered an Impossible Whopper for breakfast in states all over the Midwest, so I just found it perplexing that they would enforce this policy. I left confused and headed towards home. All I wanted was to drive around 4 hours to make the drive home on Monday a lot easier.

        The next BK I stopped at did serve me, but it was after 10:30, so I don’t know if they had the same policy. The drive back started well. There was this one section I had driven almost 200 miles on that went so smoothly on the way there, so I was hoping I could at least make it through that section. I was doing fine for a while, but then the tropical storm that missed us during the race, when I would have liked a little rain, was coming down now. It was so bad I had to pull my car over twice. Eventually it stopped raining, and I could see again, but by the third time this happened I decided I had driven all I could for one day and found a Holiday Inn Express, which seemed like an exotic award compared to all the recent camping I had done. I turned on the TV and found a Pickleball tournament taking place in St. Louis! St. Louis was playing a team from New York, if I remember right, and then I woke up 12 hours later.

        I was able to run and leave by 5 a.m., then make it home by 8:30 p.m. that night. The drive down was miserable and anxiety-inducing. The drive back was almost fun. I tried to get the best possible gas mileage I could and listened to music. Finally, my leg wasn’t bothering me, so I didn’t have that to worry about, and the race was over, so I didn’t have to stress about hydration. I could drive and sing along to the songs I had planned to listen to while running.