I am sitting in Diana’s Mustang and it is 10pm. It is a nice comfortable car even when it is not moving. Which it has been doing for hours with hundreds of other cars just outside of Gorman.
Why? Because of this crazy storm. My day began at 3am when I got up to drive to the LA marathon with Tom and who knows when it will end …
Well it is ended now at 3:24am as I try to sleep. Hopefully I have the energy to fill in what happen over these 24 hours at a later date.
Less then three hours later and I woke up around 6am so I could walk the youngest to school. Funny thing is that was the last thing the Weasel said to me when I told her we might be spending the night in the Mustang. She said, “I guess I will take Michael to school in the morning”.
But I got home and was awake so I let her sleep in. Plus I wanted to get some miles in and see if I could function after 34 miles and 3 hours of sleep in the past 27 hours. Oh and 15 hours of the 27 hours was sitting in a car.
The answer was I felt pretty good and it was a lovely morning.
So I got 3 miles in and then came home and posted Bakersfield’s results at LA then I crashed for awhile. With a more refreshed mind, let me go over my Stadium to Sea experience. It started at 3am when I got myself out of bed after getting a chug to move. I always lay everything I need out the night before and I was glad I did this morning because I was tired.
The week preceding this race was not ideal for a good performance. The Thursday before I had to make an unexpected trip to UCSB to get my oldest and that ended up being a 12 hour affair which I ended up doing again on Tuesday of this week. (The only good part of the drive on Tuesday was that I got to preview the middle third of the Leona Divide 50 miler.)
These drives really take a lot out of me both mentally and physically. Mentally because I like my routine and like to be out doing things not trapped in a car. Plus I hate cars. Physically it is tough because sitting in a car for 6 hours is not a good thing. It is in uncomfortable and aggravates any injuries I might have. Lastly traveling messes with my low -carb diet that has helped me lose 60 pounds. At home I have the right foods and enjoy eating them but on the road the good options are few so I end up eating crap I should not. But he needed to be driven so I drove him.
After the second drive on Tuesday, I was really beat up and knew it. Then Wednesday came and I was sick with something. I walked my youngest to school and felt awful. I did some work and then went to bed till 1pm when I had to pick up my son and then that night I was dead for our weekly walk on the bluffs on Wednesday. That night I went to bed super early and felt awful despite tapering.
It always amazes me that one feels terrible during tamper week. You get all kinds of phantom pains and start doubting everything. But finally the drive to LA is here. I could not sleep at all but at least I was in my bed and not paying for a hotel. So when Tom picked me up at 3:30am I was wide awake.
All week long the prediction was for rain on race day and things did not look good. On Saturday it looked like it would rain all day in Bakersfield and I had reports that meets up north had been canceled due to rain. Since storms go north to south in these parts, I knew we were in trouble.
As we drove out of town the wind really picked up and before the Grapevine it was almost a dust storm. Once we got on the hill it started to rain and got really windy too. Then it started to pour and got crazy. So far a time Tom and i were concerned if we were going to safely make it to the race but eventually we out ran the rain.
Before we knew it, we were at Dodger stadium around 5:30am and then spent some time trying to figure out what we were going to wear. It was dark and cloudy and we knew the storm was coming.
Too be continued HERE.
