Just a quick note to forward something to the brothers cause I feel like I’ve been living on the periphery, and not being very accessible or maintaining much contact with the PB’s.
I also need the crew to know that I have in fact been training for KS.
Last weekend, while Maverick was nearly killing himself at the Summer Solstice Sugar Mountain 5K, I was participating in an event that he and I did together last year, The Barkley Book Fair.
This is a nighttime trail run put on by the TATURS. It’s a pretty cool deal. The daytime version starts at 6:30 pm followed by the night version when the sun goes down.
The race director places books at selected locations on the course. As you locate the book on the course, if you stay on course, you tear the page out of the book that corresponds with your bib number, to prove that you were at that “checkpoint”.
The darkness and weather can present unique problems, as well as the terrain. Last year Mav and I got lost and quickly went from the lead to last place in only a few minutes and unlocateable checkpoints. As a result we both left the event wet, muddy and wounded from the obstacles on the course. In fact as we went to breakfast at 3 in the morning folks asked if we had been in a car accident. In the end I handily garnered the award for “Best Booboo”, thanks to bleeding legs from our struggles with a run of briars as well as a unique fall, only to be rescued by Mav. This year, I did the event with Jon Rahhal, a friend of mine. We stayed on course and as a result finished significantly higher in the standings. However, the trip did have it’s own moments of peril, and yours truly was, as you might expect, right in the middle of it!
After the lead group got off track and then eventually caught up with us, we ran as a group through a fair amount of the course. At one particular point “we” missed a marker and headed up a nearly vertical climb. The RD has a knack for running you up inclines that make feel like you would rather die than climb. (this was taken during the daylight run, imagine how much fun this is in the dark!)
We finally decided that we had to question our direction and asked some of the folks below us to check for missed markers. They did locate the correct marker and as the 5-6 of us ahead began our descent, the handhold I was relying on gave way and I began to fall a distance down the rock. A boulder leaning against my handhold, managed to dislodge and fall at a slightly greater speed than I. The result, one big ass rock landing on my head before I came to a stop on the ledge (I figure that’s a good thing). I was a little loopy for the remainder of the course, but as we all know, that is often nothing out of the norm.
Although I did for two years in a row win the “Best Booboo” award, I would strongly suggest this event for the proverbial “must do” list.
Later!
Brother Big
