Fantastic job, Flower!  Huge kudos!!

Congrats! Glad to hear you had such a good experience.

Thank you ALL so much for being there/here!!!

I still have a "runner's high" and just can't get my brain to think about anything else. Gotta get to work though. Slept like a log - I mean, like a LOG. My body just wants to wallow in any chance it gets to relax. 

More later!

Thanks Trey - wish you had been there too. I hear you've become a Marathon Maniac?! What an honor.  Time for a little recovery?

___

My recovery coming along nicely - feet, ankles and calves are feeling very good - no excessive heat or inflammation, the achilles tendons that were very sore/stiff right after the race are allready relaxing and feeling fine. I am amazed at how I have apparently pulled out of my otherwise seemingly permanent plantar faciitis (sp?) and achilles tendonitis. Knock on wood. 

The back of the legs, calves, hamstrings and glutes are all fine - not very sore, not very stiff. It's a different story when it comes to the quads. They are super sore and they simply need a lot longer to recover. I am taking it easy. Today was the first day I did anything other than just walking around at work and taking the kids to places. This morning I walked slowly on the treadmill for 38 minutes, I covered 2 miles. I just want to loosen up a little if possible.

_____

The race report itself may come in bits and pieces. My husband has wanted a lot of attention ever since I returned from the run and he deserves it. He gave me time off to go run - but now he wants it to be over with 

Do you know this feeling?

---

As we know, it's not over yet. I am trying not to talk too much about it and to act as if everything is back to normal. I can't mention that I have sore quads because then he thinks I am complaining and that I should not run that far if it hurts so bad. In other words, I need to suck it up. I am.

----

We've got important work waiting to get done today so I will check in again later. 

____

Gosh, this event was so amazing to me - I am simply overwhelmed by it. I loved it - I love it!

_____

Ever felt on an Ultra, like you were lost? I felt lost almost the entire time I ran the ultra. I placed myself in the very back of the relatively small pack, we are not talking about a race the scale of a big city marathon, since I wanted to make an attempt at doing 5 min walk, 15 min run. Well, I immidiately got dropped by the vast vast majority of people. It didn't bother me at first because I thought I would catch a few people as the day progressed. People that had gone out too fast. In the beginning I was with a few other people that were older and one man with canes/poles, that had also placed themselves at the back and were part walking, part running slowly - like me. All of these people moved over and wanted me to pass them. So I did. I kept doing my own thing while I was admiring the Forest and noticing how hilly it was. The hilly nature of it scared me a little - I was afraid of the uphills. Later in the day I felt I was running downhill all the time. How can this be? How can it be downhill all the time? Well, it wasn't but the downhills were much rougher on my legs than the uphills so I came to enjoy the parts where my legs did not take as much of a beating as they did while going downhill. There were a few sections that felt very runnable - almost straight - and I relaxed and let myself cruise on those sections. 

More Later - gotta be productive!!!!

What I wanted to say about feeling lost on my first completed 50K Ultra has to do with running most of the day without catching up to anybody, seeing or hearing anybody else running and basically the Aid Station volunteers became my only confirmation that I was on track. Toward the end of the day I started to "meet runners" that were running in the opposite direction of me. At that time, I no longer had self doubt in terms of being on track - I was carefully studying the map and double checking the markers that the RD had provided before making a decision in terms of which turns to make and which directions to run. I knew the runners I was "meeting" were running that particular part of the loop trail going in the wrong direction according to the course plan and the directions from the RD. Because I had been running by myself all day I had learned to trust my own judgment and ability to read a map. It was fun for me to "meet" those runners as apparently I was running too slowly to be able to catch anybody. About 1-1.5 miles out I actually passed a runner who's running had been reduced to walking. I think he must have been the runner that was also doing his first Ultra that day. I had seen him at the check-in in the dark early in the morning - Terri had asked if it was his first Ultra, and he responded, yes. Later, back at the finish line socializing with other runners and volunteers I learned that there were several runners that still had not completed the 50K. I knew of the people I had passed in the first couple of miles of the race and the runner that I had passed 1 mile before the finish but it turned out there was at least one more runner out there who had made some wrong turns and run some extra miles. Talk about being lost - really lost - not like me, just kind of feeling lost.

_

Reaching an aid station was a little like an oasis in the dessert. Other people's voices, human clothes, bright colors, food and water. What else is there? After a few minutes of restocking my snack baggie and filling my water bottle and eating some cold boiled potatoes dipped in salt I was good to go. 

_

At the end of the day I had stopped resisting the nature of the run - I was OK with being in my own company and as I had passed the point where most marathoners hit the wall around mile 20 I began to realize that I was still running while keeping my calm and staying focused on the task at hand. I was still running and walking and not breaking down. I realized as I have so many times before on long runs that soon the run would be over and I would be sorry that it was already over. I knew that now was the time to be in the moment and not worry about anything else. The freedom of being in the woods on the trail and letting the body move - not having to do anything else - that's the kind of freedom I rarely have. Seems there is always something else I must do, always some multi tasking that has to be done. There in the woods on the trail the only thing I had to do was to move forward. I was free to enjoy the air, the trees, the lack of polite conversation, being free to sweat and look exactly the way I did; there was the freedom of the lack of being judged. I think I had finally found myself and stopped feeling lost.

_

There were a few times when the trail would move me out of the shade cover provided by the tall trees and into a cleared area where grass and weeds had been growing tall all summer. These were clearings that were made to prevent forest fires from spreading I think. These sunny open areas were a big contrast to running in the woods. In the woods there was very little color but the clearings were covered in colorful blooming weeds - bright yellows, reds, blues and purples. I relished in the beauty of these brightly colored wildflower meadows. It only lasted a minute, then I was back under tree cover in the shaded forest - much cooler and more runnable in there. 

_

When you run for 7 1/2 hours by yourself you can congratulate yourself at the end of the day for having completed an ultra. YOU did it. I did it! YA-HOO