Day 4,576—Today and the Rim to River 100 Part IV—

 

Start time: 5:05 a.m.

        Not the best sleep last night, and I wonder if this is just a normal response to finally making it to Friday. I am so nervous about the elections and next week, but I have a four-day weekend! And the week after that I get one day off, so a lot of days off to look forward to coming up. I have started editing the race pictures, and I will hopefully be able to finish the video this weekend, but Vivian is off too, so we will see what I can get done. 

Rim to River 100 Part IV: Sudden Despair

        I made it to Cunard at Mile 27 and was overwhelmed by how many people were there. This was by far the most crew I have seen at any aid station. I knew I was going to do a few things while I was here, so I started by getting my hydration refilled, and then I saw an area with vegan items! They had vegan quesadillas and vegan muffins! I ate almost the entire plate of vegan quesadillas. I sat down with my bag to look at my hand again, and someone came with the medical bag to help me. I really just wanted something for the pain because I knew a bandage wasn’t going to work, but I could put triple paste and/or Vaseline on the spot. I first cleaned it out with water, and while it looked bad, I didn’t feel like any of the cuts were deep, so the injury mainly was just costing me time to take care of it. I would estimate I spent 30 to 45 minutes dealing with the cut. Some of that was earlier when I sat down, and then the extra time now. 

        Then I noticed that I had stopped my watch! This was the first time I had ever stopped my watch during a race by accident, and I immediately started it again, but I had lost almost 12 minutes. I also went to the bathroom before I left because my stomach was starting to bother me. I secretly wondered if something I had just eaten had upset my stomach. Still, the woman at the aid station said she always made vegan stuff because her husband is vegan, and she promised me potato soup when I see her again, which would be in 53 miles, but something nice to look forward to.

        The next section took me to the Bike Farm aid station, and to get there I had to start walking up a windy road. I was happy other runners were there with me, but cars were going down this road, and it felt like we just kept going. I had gone the wrong way a few times early in the race, but now I was doing a better job of looking for the correct sign placement and hadn’t gotten lost since. I noticed the mileage signs and the “wrong way” signs were generally placed in the corners of the path, so easy to miss if you weren’t looking for them. Before I hit the next aid station at mile 38.5, I suddenly felt disillusioned, discouraged, and generally melancholy about existence. I was moving slower and heading toward a lookout area where we were to get what looked like a key chain out of a box to take to the next aid station. One runner asked me several times if I was okay, which made me realize how transparent my emotions were, but I was confused because physically nothing was wrong. It was like despair had jumped on my back and was clouding how I was seeing everything. When I finally made it to Bike Farm, the aid worker there asked me several times if I was okay. I didn’t have much water to refill because the next aid station was only five miles away. We were in the most popular part of the trail, so at least 50 people were walking to a lookout spot. As I started the next section, I thanked the runner who had asked me if I was okay earlier before passing her. Now that I knew what was going on, it was easier to try to move past it, but I wasn’t there yet.