Savage Seven – Day 4

It was a rough day in Loopaloosa… er, I mean Ocala.  Here’s a headline that maybe never made it into the pages of Runners World because it’s obvious to most but wasn’t apparently to me: leftover Christmas cookies and a box of white wine do NOT make for a good recovery plan.  Last night’s indulgences made for a trying grind on the course today.

But… but.. wine is ALWAYS the answer…

So it came to pass that as I went another 5 rounds on the ol’ Florida trailway, I felt like John Hurt having a Nostromo dinner.  It’s an analogy I’ve used before to try and convey the… unpleasantness… of a run.  Instead of posting a GIF or video then from Ridley Scott’s seminal locked spaceship haunted house horror flick, how about comparing the experience of this morning to a DIFFERENT breed of John Hurt dining:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrxlbLVcpqI

I didn’t take a lot of photos today.  We’ve all seen the course enough times… and I’ll see it for another three days hereafter.  The big news is that halfway through today I got over the proverbial hump and it’s downhill to the end of the week now.  Four days down, 20 loops in the books.  Three days to go, fifteen loops on the horizon.

In the end, a ragged and bedraggled me crossed the finish line with a time of 3:35:26.  Here’s a shot of Chuck Savage and a few of the volunteers at the end:

I once again failed to snap a decent one of the volunteers manning the aid station at the 2.5 mile+ turnaround point.  I’m not sure I had the energy to open my camera app anyway.

The end of the road today, plus another baffling park sign:

If you’ve got a pet lion, bring him along to play with the kids!

A green medal for the day; Chuck told me to be sure to bring them all back with me on Sunday to get a photo with the full spectrum/rainbow.  He also said he’d be starting the race at 5 AM (gulp) to help folks make flights out of town.

To be honest, I’m okay with starting early; I am a little worried about the massive cold front moving through tonight that will send temperatures plummeting to near freezing.  That’s tough on this ol’ so and so.  What’s especially hard about today is that we had really great running weather and had I felt better I suspect I might have been able to match or even beat my previous times.  Ah, well — the best laid plans of Mickey Mouse and FloridaMan…

What my weather app forecast for the next few days at 5:19 AM today.

***

Tonight’s goal: zero alcohol and lots of bread to soak up whatever remains in the system.  Tomorrow’s goal: not to have an alien burst from my chest.  I got a good feeling about this… after all, it’d be hard to feel worse! (*)

(*) Again, something that probably hasn’t appeared in Runners World because it’s so flippin’ obvious, but one should never, EVER say any variation of “it can’t be any worse…” or “I can’t feel worse…” or “we’ve absolutely, categorically hit rock bottom so there’s no place to go but up.”  For the record, it ALWAYS can be worse, you can ALWAYS feel worse, and rock bottom?  Man, if 2016 taught us nothing else it’s that rock bottom does NOT exist.  Way to jinx yourself, Kevin.