My Favorite DNF - Part III

Amazingly, even with how long it was, I forgot stuff from the previous miles.  Somewhere around 15 miles in, I fell on what was the least hazardous piece of trail anywhere.  Still, my right knee hit the only rock available.  That knee is still a bit misshapen from a winter fall.  I had to walk for a bit.  Mindy suggested that perhaps it would help bust up scar tissue.  I'm not sure if it was before or after, but I also stubbed by big, left toe (yup, the toe that's chronically sore) had on a rock.  I don't know if it then kicked up and landed on my toe or if I stumbled in a weird way to let it hit on the top of my toe, but that's where it then hit.  Whoa!  It did hurt, but it was like a nerve thing.  Like it was buzzing or on fire.  In less than 1/2 a mile, my toe felt fine.  In fact, it still feels fine.  I can't remember when it's been pain free this long.  OK, maybe the bang to the knee will break up scar tissue.

Also, not long before we hit the turn around, we heard, than saw Dave heading our way.  He looked happy and strong, running with a couple other guys.  We did fist bumps and wished each other well.  I guess he was injured not long after that, but still managed to do the 43 mile finish.  Nice.

So, back to where I'd left off.  Not long after S&S were heading back, we realized we were probably not going to get to the 34 miles aid station by 3:30pm.  That was the cutoff time listed on their website.  OK, we'd wrapped our heads around that, but we had wet rocks to and incline to deal with first and foremost.

Look closely; you can see Scout and Squirrel on the rocks.  I'm sitting down, butt-scooting down the mountain.  Rick and Pete met us on this rocky patch.  Rick started to run back to the aid station to prepare for our arrival.  To show him how fine I was feeling, I ran to catch him.  I almost did, just ran out of distance. 

I looked at the table.  Oh!  You're out of the yummy roll ups :(  A volunteer said he thought they still had a few.  There were 3 left.  He encouraged me to eat them all.  I didn't need much convincing.  He poured me more Coke.  Food.  Drink.  It went down easy and felt good.

I said to Rick, "We're not going to make the cutoff."  He said, "No, you're not."  There.  It was said.  Mindy and Pete had a similar exchange.  We said bye to our great crew and to the wonderful aid station volunteers.  It's funny; we started talking like we were on our normal Brad runs.  We had a couple of pit stops and food breaks, but mostly ran really well on this last 7 mile stretch, all the while realizing we'd be done at the next aid station.  We talked about all the things we learned.  We talked about puppies, goats, showering and going to dinner with the men. 

We were closing in on the 34 mile aid station when we saw Pete running out to meet us.  He said we were about a mile away, but they'd learned that the cutoff on the website was wrong.  If we made it by 4pm, we could keep going.  Huh?  We had around 11 minutes to run a mile.  Huh?  Mindy said, lets just run how we were going to and see.  Well, we did.  We made it.  Well?  We had known we were done for over 7 miles now.  And now we weren't done?  We thought about it, but decided to live with being done.  It didn't take long to know that it would be one of our target races next year, not a training run.