Eve-ville 100 – The 24 Hours Before

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was time to leave for Eve-ville.  Gary, Kimberly, Shane and I were riding together.  They met at my house at 6:30ish that Friday morning 9/6.  It was an 8-hour drive.  We went to get Gary and made it to Grindstone around 3:30 p.m.  The plan was for Gary, Sheila and Jello to ride the course on mountain bikes and mark it with reflective tape I’d found on Amazon. What a fantastic idea that was.  I honestly don’t remember whom I have to thank for that.  Maybe Gary and LP.  We start unloading all the vehicles and setting up camp while those 3 went out to mark the course.  It was also getting close to the time I needed to eat since “race start” was 4 a.m. I like to try and eat 10-12 hours before race start and I was starting at 4 a.m.  We got everything organized and I started warming up my dinner.  LP had made enough Paella for everyone.  I had that with grill-toasted bread.  It was delicious.  However, I had probably had Paella at least 12 times prior to races or long training sessions this year.  I would not be having it again after this any time soon.  This is where I started thinking about life after this.  New recipes.  New routine. New training.  I COULD NOT wait.  There was a sense of urgency to get it over.  Shane, Kimberly and I ate dinner and continued to talk and organize as much as possible while we still had light.  I could tell I was getting nervous because I wanted to sort EVERYTHING from every bin.  This is what I do when I’m nervous.  Organize anything I can to keep my mind off of it.  Then, the park host informed us of the bears that will get into our food so we needed to store all food in bins and even put it in our car overnight.  I called a meeting with Shane and Kimberly to talk nutrition.  As I mentioned before, I was not a big fan of the loop structure.

However, having aid every 11.5 miles was going to be necessary so it ended up working out for the best.  This is also where I informed them I would be adding miles each loop to only do 7 instead of 8.  (Ask me later if that worked out.) Kimberly and Shane were both capable of running miles with me towards the end if they wanted but they were primarily there to crew.  They started taking notes and asking questions.  A lot of it was just for me to talk through it too. The other 3 came back and we got dinner ready for them.  There was a little drama at this point that I walked away from.  I just walked for 30 minutes and went to see where the trailhead was, the bathroom I’d be using on each loop and the beautiful lake.  It was getting dark pretty fast.  I wanted to be in bed by 9 p.m. if possible.  Not that I was going to sleep much.

I got everything ready in the front seat of the truck for the morning.  Oh, another very important thank you here.  Roger, a very dear friend of mine had let us borrow his truck so many times this year for races.  It was a LIFE SAVER!  I mean, what kind of friend lets you take their truck!  For multiple weekends.  Roger does.  I got ready for bed and tried to settle in a get comfortable.  I put my headset in and played white noise to try and muffle the noise from the others.  Grady was a friend of Kimberly’s and he wouldn’t be in until midnight.  He supposed to be bringing me a camp stove to make my coffee in the morning and set it on the table outside of our tent. We were planning on 5 people in one tent.  According to Gary, it was a 6-person tent.  I think it was referring to kids!  After Shane, Gary and I got settled, it would have been tight for Jello and Sheila. They opted to sleep in the bed of their truck.  Shane, Gary and I spread out in one big tent.  Around midnight, Grady showed up and I could hear him dropping off the stove. I had to pee.  I waited to hear him walk away and go back to his camp.  I tried to quietly unzip the tent (which is NOT quiet) and went behind the tent on some boulders and squatted.  It wasn’t worth a real bathroom trip to me. Squatting is hard on boulders.  I was a little worried I was going to fall off or twist an ankle.  About that time, here comes an animal.  It appeared to be a coyote or wolf!  I opened my mouth to scream and only a yelp came out.  I couldn’t scream because I was so scared!  I jumped up, pants down around my ankles and ran back in the tent!  I told Gary and Shane there’s a coyote or wolf out there as I pulled my pants back up!  I’d hoped by now I had make enough noise to scare it away!  But, I never got to go to pee!  I waited about 5 minutes later and went out again, this time staying on the flat ground right outside the tent, with my light flashing into the direction I saw it before.  I hurried and ran back into the tent and lay back down.  It was about this time that Shane and I busted out in a giggle fit!  We COULD NOT stop laughing!  This went on for a while until I giggled myself back to sleep for another hour or so. When the alarm went off, the first thing I did was eat.  I had training on a bagel with butter and jelly and a bowl of Nature Valley granola cereal with soy milk.  Then coffee. Then, I started getting ready to run. Sunscreen, clothes, lights, nutrition and hydration.