Day Six

Here I sit.  300+ miles into this wonderful saga.  I am wondering if I can write a Day 7 post that will do it justice. Then again, I have ~50 miles left to go to get there so let's just worry about today.

Because of the logistics of today's run, needing me to be at a high school track invitational more than 2/3 of the way through the miles for the day, I realized I needed to run probably the longest consecutive streak of running with no break of the entire trip. This would be hard enough as it is, if the 20th mile of the run did not have one of the biggest hills (if not THE biggest) I had faced all week. Fortunately for me, I would have my friend Darin from nearby Portland to run many of these miles with me.

In what has been, for the most part, a remarkable break in what was previously a horrendous weather span for Oregon, today was yet another one of those days. While the temperature would get well over 70 and would eventually fry me a little bit, I will take that over what it could have easily been. But did that hill have to be there? Thanks mostly to my fantastic crew (I cannot possibly begin to thank Shannon enough) and also to Darin for helping spur me along, I cannot believe how quickly I ascended over 800 feet of climbing. Look at that monster.

But soon it and the downside of it was over and after the quickest of breaks to refuel, I was joined by friends I had met while running my 202 solo run almost exactly two years ago. Keri and Justin each took turns running a few miles with me and helped me through some parts where I was really getting beat down by the sun. It really does take a village!

This all led to me getting to the Tillamook Track and Field Invitational in time to see just the last few events of the day. I saw a number of the Taft track and field team I had just spoken to the day before and was able to hear how well so many of them had done. While Taft and many other schools who came from many miles away were unable to stay after the meet to even hear the final results, Century high school from nearby Beaverton lent me their ears as I talked to them about fueling properly for athletics, making the right choices in life and always doing their best to ignore the impossible. I could see from the looks in their eyes that the message hit home perfectly.

After that, with the sun rapidly erased from the sky by some cloud cover and a few droplets forming on my Julbo sunglasses I got the last few miles of the day under my feet. Now all that remains is the finale - 50 miles tomorrow to finish this quest.

I really don't want it to end - I am lying a whole bunch. Time to wrap this baby up.