Tale 9 - Head count at Heather
If I thought
the gentlemen puking up Trapper were bad, I had no idea what this next
climb had in store for me. My stomach was okay, but by no means perfect.
It was still trying to weather the storm of the day. Now it's past
midnight and surprise, I'm still going! Shira and I play leap frog for a while
with a man and his pacer. The guy must have puked at least three times,
but he didn't stop moving. He was a machine. I kept trying to go faster to get away,
I wasn't sure I could keep it all in if I kept listening to that. I also had a strange combination of gingerale and Starbucks Frappuccino in my stomach from Bonnevier that I don't think was helping my cause.
I
had been feeling weirdly out of breath on a lot of the uphills, and I
couldn't quite figure out why. It wasn't until we were most of the way
up Bonnevier that I ditched my poles and found the feeling went away.
Still not sure what was the cause, but it only happened when I was
poling - so I gave up on that for the rest of the race!
We make it
up the hill and to Heather aid station - which comes sooner than we
thought it would - that's a first! Hitting aid stations at night with all
the glorious glow sticks and people cheering is definitely one of my
favourite things on course.
We walk into the aid station and it's
lined with space blankets. It's like a runners graveyard up there. Me? I
can finally breathe and eat and I'm feeling quite fantastic.
I bounce into the aid station and I hear this "Jenna - is that you? I'd recognize that laugh anywhere."
It's Brad snuggled up in a space blanket. Guess his stomach wasn't having a good day either.
This encounter was less of a titanic moment and more of an, oh no I'm the only one left - I have to finish!
Heather aid station was awesome. It was well stocked, and the nice
volunteers gave us a ziploc full of mars bars! Which I am truly thankful
for, because we didn't know what the next aid station would have in
store, and let me tell you it wasn't much!
We filled our water bladders, and they had to use a little strainer to filter out the moss which was kind of fun.
We bounced back out onto the trail - I was desperate to get as far as I could while the air was still cool!
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