The alarm went off at 3 AM this morning. Happy boxing day, Kevin. Little did I realize just how many rounds I’d be going with the world.
I stopped at a light before getting on the the Florida Turnpike to head for Ocala. The FL Turnpike is billed as Florida’s Less-Stress Way as means of playing up it may not be a freeway but it’s a LESS-STRESSWAY! Get it? Yeah, me neither.
Anyway, point is, here’s my dashboard clock at close to the start of this morning’s drive:
I stopped to get gas along the way figuring I’ll be making this back and forth drive seven times in the next week so might as well fill up — plus it was a penny cheaper out in Ocala than the stations by me. And we all know about what a penny saved equals. Unfortunately, the first pupm I pulled up to was out of order… and the second one I circled around to didn’t have a working card reader. Every other pump? One hundred percent functional. I should’ve gone inside and bought an ANTI-lottery ticket as I was stringing together a streak of luck that only George Costanza could top.
Arriving at the trailhead a little after 5 AM for a 6 AM start… only to hear that the website is wrong and the race isn’t going to start until 7 AM. I was not alone in being surprised by this change… and honestly, had it been phrased differently it might not have been even something I gave a second thought to. They didn’t say, “Ya know, it’s really foggy and dark out here…” (which it most certainly was…)…”And I’m worried about runners’ safety on a dark course so I thought we’d delay until the sun comes up.” Instead they said, “Oh, yeah… I just decided to start at 7.”
A bit of a runner revolt ensued and Chuck Savage, the race director, who is almost universally described as an incredibly nice guy who sometimes isn’t the best at organization, agreed to hold two starts — one at 6 AM and one at 7 AM. We’d all just add an hour to the official clock time at 7 AM.
Again, given the ambient light… or lack thereof… I get his concerns:
The nice thing was that about 10 of us were there expecting the race to start at 6 AM and wanting to avoid as much as possible the forecast of 85 degree weather for the late morning, early afternoon. So we all got to go together. Because I was a bit fleet of foot this morning, I even had a charming bicyclist who was leading the way as an escort. She was volunteering and helping out, a woman who’d been a Floridian for 23+ years while most of her family has remained in Sopporo, Japan. She was thrilled to send a photo back to her brother yesterday who was dealing with 3 FEET of snowfall the previous night; her Christmas consisted of a stroll on the beach with her dog whilst dolphins played in the background.
The course consisted of a quick out and back and then 5 loops through the trailhead bike path of a local park, each loop a little over 5 miles. This is the same course for all seven days so while I wasn’t versed with the turns before dawn, by the 35th loop on January 1, 2017, I suspect I’ll be an expert!
As it was, the course was exceedingly well marked with flour arrows indicating turns and directions. Aside from one or two potential detours, it was fairly self explanatory — keep taking the right fork until you hit the road way, make a left to the end of the pavement and turn around to run back. I didn’t take a lot of photos before the sun came up — no reason unless you’re looking for a black screen. But here’s the turnaround point:
I did take a few shots of the course once there was a bit of light… and anything I missed I can reshoot tomorrow… or the day after that… or the day after that… or any of the three days after that.
Running into the finish line, I clocked a 3:17 and change — they had me at 3:17:22 and I think my Garmin was closer to 3:17:34. Let’s call it under 3:18 for the 26.2 miles.
I tried snapping a selfie with the volunteers manning the finish at the time along with the race director. As you can tell, I didn’t QUITE pull it off…
So to make up for it, I grabbed them before they headed off to relieve a few of the volunteers out on the course manning the aid stations there.
As I headed back to my car to being the 90 minute drive home, I snapped one last celebratory pic. They gave me a mug!
Five loops down… 30 to go.
