Jack Smith has a park named after him in Needles. I’ll need to google that to see what’s his story. Feels made up.
When I went in search of the race location yesterday to scope out where I would be going this morning, my GPS tried to take me on a dirt road parallel to train tracks. It was a route that was… dodgy. At some point GoogleMaps wanted me to cross the tracks… even though there was no ramp, road, or any indication of a means to cross. I opted to “use the force” and self navigate to the real roads of Needles, figuring at some point there had to be a railroad crossing to get to the other side of town. Spoiler Alert – there was.
Good thing I did pre-scope as I wasn’t in the mood to be celestially navigating this morning to the start. It’s been a lot of fun running with the Mainly Marathon crew but I’m a little tired of living out of my suitcase and wandering aimlessly, nomadically, Kevin-ically.
Today was a convoluted run through two adjacent parking lots, back around the edge of the park then onto a gravely. dirt road parallel to the train tracks (on the opposite side from where I was yesterday — I still don’t know where googlemaps THINKS there’s a crossing). I heard a few grumblings from folks confused about the turns but the course is the course of course of course … and as such the course is sometimes wonky. I will say I think it was long as my Garmin showed 26.9 miles at the end; as I said though, the course is the course. We run what is set before us. That said, I suspect Clint and Co. will alter the layout for the next running.
I didn’t take a lot of pictures on this 14 loop race. This happens sometimes at runcations’ or vacations’ end. You just run out of oomph. On top of that, I’m always bad about goodbyes and endings. I’m sure I failed to thank some folks who were there all week running, cheering, supporting, organizing. I meant to snap some more photos with people I missed earlier in the week but either forgot or found myself introverting/turtling as this was the end of the series.
Amidst that receding gregariousness, I *tried* to grab a few shots along the way. Thus, I give you a curated selection of the last day of the inaugural Southwest Series.
While sitting at the airport hours later I posted a blanket thank you to folks on Facebook as it was my privilege and pleasure to run with them.
Speaking of the airport, the drive back to LAX was one of those “Kevin’s Law” road races. You know “Kevin’s Law” – it’s for when all things that could go wrong do go wrong AND a lot of things that should never go wrong GO HORRIBLY WRONG. It’s for when Murphy’s Law just doesn’t adequately convey what has gone awry.
Bad drivers, accidents resulting in 5 minute slow downs EVERY 10 minutes, and off ramp food/gas options that weren’t easy off-easy on but were MILES off-MORE MILES on because of one way streets. If a delay could happen, it did. I originally had budgeted 4.5 hours to get from Needles to LAX but it took so much longer. Eventually I made it to the rental car drop off, took a shuttle that had to make multiple stops elsewhere, and then got dropped off at the farthest point from the ticketing counter while still technically being at the same terminal.
What should have been a leisurely 2 hours in LA to stop and get dinner somewhere before dropping the car all turned into a mad dash to TSA pre check and a fifteen minute window to inhale an overpriced meatball sub inside the inelastic economic system that is an airport terminal. Fun fact – this foot long sub cost a dollar an inch.
But I’ve made it. I’m on the plane to Nashville. I have a $68 Motel 6 room for approximately 5 hours when I land. Five hours to fitfully sleep before I have to go to the Harpeth Hills Flying Monkey start line. This is a marathon just to GET to a marathon.
Considering I’ve now finished 9 events in 8 days, I’m sure I can make this happen. With the successful completion of the race tomorrow I will hit a new personal milestone – the most races run on consecutive days. It started with the Doctor Strange 10K, the the Avengers Half and Vegas Marathon, six days of the Southwest Series of Marathons, and culminating in Nashville. Ten events in 9 days, eight and a half marathons plus a 10k.
And for funsies, I’m trying to put together a rather meaningless graph showing my finish times for the marathons I’ve run this trip. I’m struggling with Apple’s Numbers app at the moment but I’ll post it here once I get it sorted… plus at this stage I might as well wait until I finish Harpeth Hills. So consider this “a scenes from our next episode” teaser.
Onward!
EDITOR’S NOTE (added on 11/22/2016): Click here for the meaningless chart!