Hey Guys - Thanks to everyone for following my miles over the weekend... knowing I had people watching kept me going through the grueling parts of the run! I was bummed that emails weren't working - that was a really cool feature - I too was surprised the organizers hadn't planned better for server issues. I did get a few emails before the server went down - I tried to save them till later in the race to keep me motivated. :)

Overall though, the race was well set up. They offered plenty of food (mostly munchies - as you can imagine, "real" food will make you sick while running), and had a big screen TV up showing the statistics of all runners (laps run, miles run, placement, etc.).

I gave myself a strict plan for this run -- go out very slow, and methodically pick away at each lap (each lap was a hair over 1 mile). The key was to not think about the totality of it all, but rather chip away at each lap. Staying relatively slow was a challenge in the first 10-12 hours, as there were plenty of people that took off "fast" (5mph or so is fast in these races).... but after 14-15 hours my patience paid off - one by one, runners slowed, took breaks, or quit. For the first half of the race I stuck around 14-12th place... but I slowly inched up in the night hours all the way to 3rd.

In the final 5 hours, there were several runners that jumped back into the race - these guys/girls were running SO FAST compared to my slow jog - I was a bit worried that they would close the gap that took my hours to create between us. But, most of them ran 5-10 miles, and then quit again.

I am so thankful to Brian and Karen for coming to the race, staying there all night, and pushing me through some of the hard moments!!! I'm not certain I could have endured without their presence and positive support.

Needless to say, I'm INCREDIBLY SORE today. The evening after the run (last night), I had considered going to an urgent care facility for muscle relaxers and a wheel chair - I was completely immobile. Today, I'm able to walk, but its not pretty. :) Still, I say it is all worth the feeling of accomplishing something so challenging!

Thanks again for following my crazy race!