O, Yeah!

I Picked up another letter this morning.

5 of us crazies set out at Croom last night 7PM and ran around the woods until 1 am this morning. It may seem whacked to some, but I got a letter out of it!

Here's where I stand: P I N H O _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _! I'm doing A-Ok.

Last nights run was an adventure.

I met up with A2 and A3 at the Winner's grill and off we went. After placing our 3 drops at various places along the route we were off to the starting point at Tucker Hill. Along the way A2 stopped his big truck, not once but twice to move gopher tortoises off of Croom Road. Surely this would bring us good karma.

The karma was working as we hooked up with Woody and Dan and took off down the trail. We made it to the first drop point about 8 miles in with no problem. We refueled and again went down the trail. A2 was feeling pretty good as he took us through the Vortex twice, if it's worth doing it's worth doing twice he must have been thinking. We quickly got back on track and trudged to drop #2 at 12 - 13 mile point. At this drop all the A's 1-3 were feeling Antsy. Oh, we weren't in a hurry, or nervous, we had just placed our drops in the midst of an ant colony. We spent the next 10 minutes swatting at these god forsaken near invisible little leg munchers.

Once we go out of there the biting subsided and we were back on track. A few stumbles aside we made it the the 20 mile drop without incident. There we refueled for the last time and got back out pretty quickly. We had a few stretches of really good running and I was feeling better than I have all summer. As we were going up E's hill, I decided that I wasn't going to walk at all for the last 4 miles, included the hills. So, off I ran.

There were a few little inclines that I normally walk, but I was using A2's karma and ran up the little hills. When I got to Croom Mtn (this is actually higher and with more switchbacks than Devil's Thumb) I was second guessing my decision to run the entire route, but I thought, What the Johnny Ho, I'll give it a go, and I kept my head down and BAM, I ran to the top and over. Of course having run up Croom Mountain, now it would have just been wimpy to walk up the twins, or no-name hill, so even as I was tiring I kept running.

I decided I was going to run to where the Blue trail hits the Orange trail 1/3 of a mile to the finish, I was looking at the spot just a few yards ahead when Blam! I should have been looking at the trail because I went down like a salami (hard!). The ants, then this, could we be running out of Karma. The answer was readily apparent in 1/3 of a mile. When I got up to A2's truck, the driver's rear time was pancake flat. We got screwed, literally, there was a big silver screw wedged in his tire. When he got back to the truck a few minutes later I got to greet him the news, you're Karma does not extend to your truckma, because your tire is flatma! Even though the tire was only flat on the bottom, at 1 am after 27 miles of running in 100% humidity, changing a tire is no fun. But A2 barely complained as he jacked the truck up 3 times (if it's worth doing it's worth doing again, and again!) swapped out the tire and headed home.

All in all, it was a great night. Best of all, I got my O!