Day 3

Day 3 is finished...I reiterate that this just seems to get more and more difficult. My recovery has been really good, and I feel good in the mornings, the course is just brutal. Today, in stage 3 of 4, we had to climb about 500 meters over about 1 km. It was ridiculous, and definitely the most difficult thing I have ever had to do. Not to mention that we climbed to just over 6000 feet. My lungs felt fine (thank you elevation mask), but my legs could feel the lack of oxygen, and burned like no other (not so thank you elevation mask).

 

SO to start today, I felt really good actually (better than day 1 and day 2, progressively better). Maybe I actually took too long off before the race. After reflecting on the first day cramping, I do know that I think I was just dehydrated from being in China for a week before and eating salty foods and not having enough water. Now that is straightened out, so cramping has been under control. My bag is still way too heavy, but I am putting down my food, so it is getting lighter by the day.

 

Anyway, back to day 3: I was doing well in stage one, feeing good, and then, because I was running alone at the time, I stepped in a stupid mud pit. My shoe stayed in the mud, and my foot came out. Then mud fell straight down into the shoe. I could hardly get the shoe out of the mud, as it was stuck. Then I walked through the muddy water to a nearby rock and scooped it out. On the way, I fell in the mud. I was a mess. Then I started running again, and the same thing happened to the other shoe. Needless to say, I lost about 10 minutes in the process. But it was good fun for the competitors that came up behind me in the meantime. Luckily, there was a nearby stream to wash off a little bit before continuing. In the end, I had to run/walk the 3.5 remaining stages (about 32km) with soaked shoes, although I will say that the drainage on the Brooks Cascadias is pretty good, so my feet werent sloshing around atleast. Amazingly I made it through the day with no new major blisters, just same small ones. I also rolled my ankle slightly on stage 4, so it is a bit sore with my achilles on the same leg. We will see how it feels tomorrow: back into the compression socks. After all that crap, I still managed to finish 23 today. I managed to sprint into the finish just under 5hrs 50 minutes. But I cannot express in words how hard that mountain was to climb. There were definitely times when you had to pretty much crawl up. The breaks were very frequent. Also, as you probably see from the news, more people have dropped out today because of that mountain.

 

It is definitely not going to get easier with another marathon tomorrow and a double marathon on thursday/friday. But I have now made it through basically 3 marathons in three days with lots of weight on my back.

 

Wish me luck and thanks again for the messages! Three more stages to push through...