Fat Man Shuffle, Part 2

The course starts through suburban Virginia. Not much to look at, but your mind is trying to evaluate everything. Am I going too fast? Too slow? Do I have to go to the bathroom? As a matter of fact, I do. Damn, didn’t I just go. Then I noticed that everyone was just lining up on the side of the road and doing their business. When in Rome… I felt like I was in Europe again where there is a much more realistic/pragmatic view of body functions.

The first part of the course has a nice little hill. There was a race worker announcing when we had reached the top that everything was downhill from here, that we had reached the highest point of the race. I traded barbs with the guy next to me about being glad it was at the beginning and not the end. Little did we know.

I reached the halfway mark at 2:22, which positioned me nicely for beating my goal of under 5 hours. Then the sun came out. It heated up to about 80 degrees. And the wind started to blow. The water points were placed every 2 miles. I would drink 4 – 5 glasses of water and I would have cotton mouth within a mile. Not a good sign.

All the advice forums talked about having 2 goals. One for perfect conditions and a backup goal if all hell broke loose. I was now on the backup goal…I just wanted to finish.

I struggled, but I was still feeling pretty good as I hit the 20-mile mark. Then the wheels fell off. I started making deals with myself. If you walk for 5 minutes, I’ll run the next mile. So there was a lot of walking and running to the finish line. But I found the finish line. Goal accomplished. For those keeping score at home, I ran it in 5:35.