Beyond the Blog Day 1 (April 28): Other Observations and Things That Happened

Initially, the weight of Slappy wasn’t a big deal, since I had so much training behind me.  More bothersome was the fact that it was a hot day, in the 80’s, and I was running east-bound on 74 with no shade.   The hills were non-stop rollers, which I should have been better prepared for, but Gmap doesn’t have a very good elevation function.  The other limitation to Gmap is that the distances are approximate and the actual distance is longer than what I calculated.   This is because I drew straight lines on Gmap, cutting off the actual road.  You can see this below between miles 9 and 11...Gmap is calculating a straight line, i.e. the shortest distance between two points.   But on the actual road, when travelling by foot, the distance is longer.

Even on the highway, I did see plenty of wildlife on the rocky roadside.   I was surprised by a huge black snake who was clinging to an outcropping right in front of me.    When I finally made it into Murphy about 6 hours after my start, I came upon a family of either marmots or groundhogs, who had made their dangerous home in a traffic circle.   I guess there are pros and cons to that choice, if you are a ground-dwelling rodent.

I was about 2 miles from the finish at Harrah’s Casino when the heat and hills got to me.  I was still on the highway, however, and the only place that had liquid refreshments was a roadside gas station across 6 lanes of traffic.   As I said in my blog post for that day, “I learned that the median strip between the highway is never a place human beings should go for any reason.”   There was a deep trench between the two sets of lanes, filled with fire ant hills, spiky grass, and broken glass.   Talk about an inhospitable environment!   I made my way through this gauntlet and walked up to the bulletproof glass-enclosed register.  People just aren’t used to seeing someone on foot in these situations, particularly someone with a big floppy hat, bright yellow shirt, and backpack.  The alarmed clerk dutifully took my soggy money for a non-diet Dr. Pepper, and I found some shade against the building to sit down and cool off for a few minutes.   Only one day into this adventure and I already felt like a vagabond, sitting at the gas station watching the business of daily life at the pumps unfold in front of me.   Appropriate enough, because I was completely gassed at that point.  (sorry).

I continued on for the final few miles and the team met me at the entrance to the long winding road up to the casino.   They were hooting and hollering and it felt good at that moment to be done for the day.

After recovering in our room for an hour, Cheryl and I joined Becky, Mike and Matt for a quick and very mediocre dinner at the casino.  We returned to the Stonebrook Lodge and had a few drinks on the ground-floor patio, where Matt did a quick interview about Day 1.  I don’t remember exactly what I said, but we got into the “why” pretty quickly.   It’s not a quick and easy answer and it got more difficult that night once we returned to our rooms.   I was completely spent...the heat and hills had taken it all out of me and I couldn’t imagine doing this for another four weeks.   I was curled up in a ball at the foot of the bed, trying to disappear into myself.   Thank God for Cheryl, as always, she coaxed me out of my dark little hole and reminded me of the words spoken to me the night before.   Take it step by step, one foot forward, one mile at a time, one day at a time.

At this point, I had no idea this would become my guiding mantra for the next 28 days.