I relish the things that make me feel truly alive. Sometimes they come from incredible amounts of adrenaline. Sometimes they come from witnessing the power of nature. Sometimes they come from pushing my body beyond what I previously thought were its limits. That last one happened yesterday when I successfully completed the longest run of my life... Here are the stats:
7:00:46 (about 6:30 when you count only the time spent running)
33.51 miles
6164 calories
Hi temp of 78, hazy, strong wind from the north/west
2 ostriches
1 dead camel
Lots and lots of live camels
1 dead bat
1 albino insect
1 lizard
1 very fast jackrabbit
You see some weird stuff out there in the middle of the desert. Including lots of random farms and tents setup in various places. We left my compound at around 5am, arrived at the starting point at 6:15, started by 6:30 and ran straight East using a GPS watch that had various waypoints entered in it to point us towards where the path crossed a road such that our follow vehicles could meet us there to fill us back up on water and food. That was about every 6 to 8 miles, 5 way points in all. The 2nd to last leg was by far the most difficult given the very hilly/rocky terrain and the fact that we had to climb over several oil/gas pipes that cut across our path. All in all it was a good day. I never would have thought even a marathon possible, much less going beyond that. I did both of those things for the first time on Friday. The longest training run I had done leading up to this was only 15 miles and passed that well before the half-way mark so it's shocking I got away with only 2 blisters, one on each foot at the exact same spot. Just goes to prove what you can do when you put your mind to it. Mind over matter, I always say.
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