Black Mountain Monster

I took 3 weeks off from running after the Twisted Ankle. I did run one 3 miler about 10 days after my injury and that convinced me to take more time off. The ankle was just not right. I bought every ankle brace known to mankind but none of them felt comfortable. I finally settled on just wrapping my ankle in a ace bandage for some support but that came off after about 5 miles when I developed a blister where it rubbed my ankle. So, I ran the rest of the way with a naked ankle. I'm slow enough but was really slow on the single track trails. I was watching where I put my foot with just about every step. The only time I was not looking down was along a short paved trail that was part of the course.

I had come into this race with some lofty goals. The easiest one was to beat my 48 miles from the previous year. Or so I thought. It's not that I had a bad day, I just did not have a good one. The best part of this race was seeing and running with lots of friends......Psyche, Charles, both Jasons, Weezy, Daniel, Terri, and Angela....and making some new ones.

The day was quite hot but I thought I was managing my fluids and electrolytes well. I carried a handheld and was draining it every lap plus taking an S cap each lap. I still developed huge puffy fingers so need to do some research into that. Didn't eat a whole lot of food, just did not feel hungry and then the gastro problems started up. I was a frequent visitor to the 2 portojohns on the course and finally after a miserable 14th lap decided to call it quits. Only managed 43.4 miles, not even close to what I had hoped to run.

Yeah, I'm disappointed but I have 2 more 24 hour runs in the plans for this fall. I will set a new distance PR at one of them. Count on it.