Even with the day off yesterday, and despite the uneven
ground, I somehow found a way to sleep all the way up to the muffled music
rumbled through our tent. In other words, I was woken up right at 6 am. As I
sat up, I immediately realized that the ground really took a toll on my back
and neck. It was the first time of the week that I was actually feeling sore,
and it wasn’t even from running. As I got up and moving, and did a few air
squats with my leg wrapped in the voodoo band, however, I started to feel a lot
better. And the hours leading to the 8 am start pretty much proceeded as
normal.
Despite being an unwelcoming place to sleep, the camp did
offer some pretty amazing views, which was really noticeable that morning as
the sun began to rise. We were surrounded by mesas, and in the distance, you
could see the beginning of Zion National Park, which is where we were headed
that day. The other thing that was noticeable that morning was that it was a
bit cooler because we were starting a slightly higher altitude (Note: I assume
that I didn’t notice these things during the rest day, yesterday, because I was
just so beat down that I didn’t really care about the temperature and the
scenery).
As we lined up at the starting line, Collin and Tess went
through their usual weather forecast, terrain, scenery for the day speech. To
be honest, the only thing I could think about was the voice in my head saying
“Please God, no more sand, or at least not too much sand!” The speech ended,
and again, we were off.
Unfortunately, to my displeasure, for a majority of the
section leading up to CP1 (about 7 miles), the surface was indeed sand.
Nonetheless, I was feeling pretty good, so I stayed near the front as I ran
with Garth. Garth’s goal: Just keep Alberto in sight! The other thing that made
today’s course attractive was that as we progressed through CPs, the distances
became shorter and shorter to the next CP all the way to the finish (i.e.,
start to CP1 was ~7 miles, CP1 to CP2 was ~6 miles, CP2 to CP3 was ~4 miles,
and so on). This made segmenting the course much easier and made it feel like I
was making noticeable progress along the way.
As Garth and I ran at a pretty brisk pace, I fell behind
just a bit as we repeatedly climbed and descended. While I was still
maintaining a good pace, I felt it was too inefficient to run the sandy hills.
So I fast-hiked the ups and ran the downs.
I was feeling good going into CP1, so I filled my one empty
bottle very quickly and continued on, leaving behind a couple people that were
slower transitioning through the CP. From that point all the way to just before
CP4, while there were people in the distance both in front of and behind me, I
was pretty much running alone. As such, there were really only a couple of worthy
highlights from this portion of the course.
First, the scenery was pretty good, and the terrain was good
for running. Specifically, from CP1 to CP2, the trails were wide, there were
some good down hills, and there was a bit less sand. So I covered the distance
pretty quickly, and I was at CP2 before I knew it. However, after departing CP2
the course turned to a gradual up, with some pretty short steep climbs, that
lasted all the way up to about the final 1.5 miles of the day. In addition,
after CP3, we were back in the sand. Thus, this portion of the course forced me
to mix in more walking than I would have liked.
The second highlight of this section was immediately after
CP3, when we passed through an awesome natural tunnel through the mountain and
then scaled up about 15-20 feet using a rope for support. As an estimate, I
would have to say that the tunnel was about 200 meters long, which meant that
by the time I got about half way through, it got really dark, especially since
I had just come out of the bright sun and my eyes were still trying to adjust.
While the darkness caused me to fall a couple times, as I stumbled across large
boulders, I was actually able to catch myself pretty easily because there were
large rock formations on both sides of me that was weaving my way through. The
tunnel also provided a nice cool break from the sun, which was really starting
to bake down on me.
After passing through the tunnel, I found myself in low
canyon, which I ran through for about 10 minutes before arriving at a “rope
climb.” As I approached the rope from a distance, the rock I was going to scale
appeared much steeper than it actually was.
Consequently, even though there were volunteers around to guide us in
the right direction and ensure our safety, my initial thought was “how the hell
am I going to climb that with a backpack on?” Luckily, as I got closer, I
realized it wasn’t actually as straight up as it appeared from a distance.
Still, I have to say that for next year, the race organizers could make it a
bit more “climb” friendly if they simply bought a thicker rope. The ~1 inch
diameter rope was definitely not the easiest thing to hold on to, and it
probably made the climb more difficult, and strenuous on my grip/shoulders,
than if I had simply climbed up the rock without it. Once the scaling was done,
we were met with more sand and more up, up, up, some of which were actually
pretty steep gassers.
The third highlight came just before CP4, where I was
following an obviously distinct dirt road that was marked by pink flags, but
the next thing I knew, the flags were gone! Nevertheless, I still saw a number
of footprints continuing down the road, so I continued on for about another 100
meters until I realized I had to be going in the wrong direction. I could hear
the cowbell and yelling from CP4 relatively close by, so I figured I must have
missed a turnoff. So even though some of
the footprints continued on, I decided to circle back to find the last flag. On
my return, I ran into 3 other competitors that had clearly also missed the
turnoff, so we made our way back together. (Side note: I later found out that
almost everyone at the front had missed this turnoff, and it wasn’t until we
got back to it and repositioned the flags, that it became apparent that one
should turn off the main road). On the way back, one of the competitors
suggested turning off course and just heading towards the noise coming from the
CP. I mentioned that this was probably not a good idea for a couple reasons:
(1) they would probably impose a penalty for coming in from the wrong
direction, and more importantly (2) we were basically on top of a mountain, and
we risked ending up blocked by an impassable cliff.
Finally, we found the turnoff, which was not at all clear
from the flag markings, and we turned downhill towards CP4. We bolted down the
steep, sandy terrain and then climbed the other side of gully to CP4. From
here, we only had about 3 miles to the finish. So I was quickly in and out,
figuring I only needed 1 water bottle, at most, to get me to the finish.
The next 1.5 miles was a tediously long, gradual climb up a
dirt road before we met up with what I guess would be called the “main” road
(i.e., it was asphalt/dirt and was about 20 feet wide). We then had an
additional short ¼ mile climb before we peaked out and gradually descended for
about 1.25 miles all the way to the finish. This last stretch was actually
pretty pleasant, as it involved no sand was very easy to run. During this
stretch, moreover, after having met up with Chantal (the overall women’s
leader) just before CP4, we chatted and ran into the finish together. As noted
earlier, Vanessa had had been shifted to the finish line team the day before,
so she was also there to greet us, which was nice.
Overall, it was a good day, and I finished in under my goal
time of 5 hours 30 minutes for the marathon distance. I was also feeling very
strong going into the finish and was already thinking tomorrow would be a good
day as well.
After finishing, I was feeling especially hungry, so I
quickly made my way for some food and recovery drink. On my way to the tents,
however, myself, and some others, were stopped by the woman driving the giant
water truck who offered to dowse us in water using the hose. We immediately
took her up on the offer, and despite the initial shock of the cold water
hitting my head/chest, it felt amazing. It was the first time in 5 days that I
had anything remotely close to a shower, and it was extremely refreshing. And
now I was really ready to eat. So I sat down in the cyber tent and pounded my
food.
Everything about this fine Thursday seemed to be great! Then
came the trek to my tent, which was on the exact opposite side of the Camp 5.
Now you would think that after all my complaining about Camp
4 (i.e., our outrageously slanted campsite), nothing could be worse going
forward, at least that’s what I thought until I had to walk through Camp 5. To
get to the point, the camp was basically constructed on top of a grove of goat
heads, which are tiny, really sharp burs.
Not only did these goat heads stick all over you, they made it nearly
impossible to walk around without getting stabbed and cut up. It also made
walking around in my camp slippers next to impossible. If that wasn’t bad
enough, our tent was on top of many of these plants, which made walking around
the tent sometimes painful, and, at least initially, discouraged many of my
tent mates from inflating their air pads because they were concerned about
getting holes (Fortunately, not having an air sleeping pad, this was not an issue
for me). And as bad as it was during the day, everyone was really dreading the
nighttime trek to the bathroom in the dark. Needless to say, the trips back and
forth across Camp 5 were limited as much as possible for the remainder of the
stay.
The other problem with Camp 5 was that our tent was once
again build next to an ant colony, and this time they were biting ants.
Apparently, because we had opened the backside of our tent to create airflow,
while Brian was lying down resting, he was woken up by an ant bite. Luckily, it
was only one. And after complaining, the volunteers were able to get the ants
under control by digging and spraying the edge of our tent, and no one seemed
to be bothered for the rest of the night.
On the plus side, being that we were the last tent in the
camp, we left the far side of the tent open all night, and it offered a great
view of the crystal clear sky each time I woke up during the night. In
addition, I was actually able to get a descent night’s sleep because the ground
was flat; and fortunately, I didn’t have to make the trek across camp through
the goat heads minefield to go to the bathroom. In fact, I think all five of us
remaining slept pretty well that night, as the miles were really starting to
pile on.
Scenery from Camp:
Starting line of Stage 4:
Shortly after the start of Stage 4:
Amazed by the rope climb they are expecting to to have to do:
Terrain and views during Stage 4:
Done for the day - at Camp 5:
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