Full Circle

Pre-race: Breakfast of champions…peanut butter and honey toast with black coffee
Running shoes and bag of clothes, Cliff bars, water and banana

Get set: Pouring down rain (the rain never stopped the entire race) Disney World ponchos until the start of the race. Temperature is 48 degrees.

Go: Second wave start at 7:30 am. Off and running at the front of the pack (which later saved my rear end when they cut off the majority of second wave runners at A-Frame–10 miles up the mountain–due to severe hail, snow and wind)

Running the Race: I felt great throughout the race. My coach, Lisa Rainsberger, prepared me very well. Three cliff shot packs, four refills of a 2 liter bottle of water later, I was almost at the top.

A-Frame: The weather really hit. Hail and sleet beat down on us those last three miles. The Search and Rescue team gave out large black garbage bags…a true lifesaver once we hit the last miles. My feet were bricks of ice and my hands, I couldn’t feel them.

This race was the hardest race I’ve ever been in. The weather was very cruel.

The Finish: 3 hours, 48 minutes. 14,115 feet in the sky.

We were ushered very quickly to a large metal container building and instructed to put on our warm clothes. Most people were shaking from cold so bad that they couldn’t get their bags open for their warm clothes. People were on stretchers with IVs being pumped in. Many suffered hypothermia.

It was an experience that I will never forget.

And because of my friend, Pam (who finished despite altitude sickness and hypothermia) and our hours of training, we accomplished this goal!

I’m proud of myself. I’m proud of my family. They supported every training run (and you too Madeline!), every early morning. I was greeted at the door post race with a caramel latte, made by my wonderful husband, and a box of personalized M&M candies…a favorite that we will enjoy when seeing the movie “Clone Wars” with the kids this afternoon.

It was a good day, a race I’ll never forget with a friend who helped me through it all! Thank you Pam!

I’ve attached this article from our local paper, the Gazette. It’s pretty descriptive of the race. I finished a good hour after he did and got the bulk of the nasty weather.