Me: Chisholm, do you want to go on a run this weekend?
Chisholm: Actually, I'm going to run the Red Bud 50 on Saturday morning.
Me: What's that?
Chisholm: It's a 50 mile bike ride, but I'm going to run it. I plan on starting at 2 AM. You interested?
Me: Let me think about it.
Thursday evening:
Me: Sure. I mean what else would I be doing at 2 AM on Saturday morning?
And so it began, Chisholm had a crazy idea and I was crazy enough to go along with it. We drove part of the course on Friday evening, planting some food and water along the way. 1:30 AM came really quickly, by 2:15 AM we were off and running. In my mind's eye picturing the run I imagined running along country roads, a low sun and pleasant tshirt running temps. Somehow that fact we would be running for almost five hours before the sun rose slipped right past me. Oops. I actually wasn't even planning on wearing anything over my tanktop. Chisholm lent me a long sleeve shirt and I'm glad I used it, it was in the upper 30's at the start and it went down to 32 before it started to get warmer.
The course is made for bikers, as such it is entirely on pavement (Chisholm's training for Badwater this summer and doesn't want to step on trail until it's over) and features very few turns. I think there is like 10 turns total, one of which we missed and ended up running on I-44 for a short while before we hopped a fence to get on the service road. Good thing is was 3:00 AM and there was very little traffic.
Around 6:30 AM the temperature got low as it was going to, I was starting to feel tired and I was definitely wishing I brought the gloves Chisholm set out for me. He let me borrow his hat as an insulator between my hand and my water bottle, that helped. The sun just started to shed some light when we got to the corner of NE 36th and Triple X (such a bad ass name for a road, I told Chisholm I want to steal the sign). Here the road actually curves a little as it crosses the North Canadian River. The sun was cresting the horizon and I was starting to feel better although it wasn't until 7 miles later, at the corner of Wilshire and Hiawassee when we first saw some bikers heading the other direction that I really picked up.
Everyone was waving to us, saying hi. I don't think anyone knew that we had started over 6 hours ago and were planning on running as far as they were biking! Some people asked us where our bikes were. Our best responses:
"Free your bike, your mind will follow."
"It's more fun to run."
It was harder on the way back. Now that it was light we could see how far the straight-a-ways were and how far we had to go. We just had to keep our eyes on the road and put on foot in front of the other. Bikers now were passing us on the way back in. We were feeling tired, but we finished in 9 hours and 20 minutes. We snagged a finisher medal and went to grab a burger. Good times to be had by all.
Running moment of the week: Besides the above (which was definitely the run of the week), today I had a great run with Maia out at Lake Thunderbird. She did awesome, no slacking and she seemed to always have smile on her face.
3/31 - 4/6
total miles: 71.8
time: 12:20
March miles: 221.4
YTD miles: 753.6
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