As you guys know we had front row seats to crew experienced ultra runners last weekend. The weekend started Friday morning at 9am then driving to the race start. If you ever been to Mt High its around there in Wrightwood. Its a small town with little or no cell coverage- Both Lorraine and Marisa gave us their race day game plan in terms of meeting points, the food they wanted, drinks etc...
The race started at 5am on Saturday- we went to see them off and we had 2hrs to meet them at the first aid station 7:15am- we packed the car and started the adventure...part of our game plan was to find good parking next to the aid stations. We observed other crews and solo runners with no support. We wanted to make sure they had what they needed, things like wind breaker- it was windy, aquaphor for their lips, sunblock, refill their water bottles, and making sure they ate their food. This continued throughout the day about every 1 or 2hrs...
Another part of the game plan was to get rest throughout the day... on one hand it was a great experience to to see how the runners mood would change from station to station. Observing how they bonked, or fumbled (jay or tom) and how the top runner zipped in and out of the aid stations. Marisa needed someone to pace her from mile 50 to 75. There was an option of splitting up the run between Corrinne and I. I opted to run the first 6.5miles then Corrinne had planned to run the other 15 miles. Marisa came into mile 52 feeling sick and had been vomiting since mile 36...she wanted to try to continue. Physically she felt great, legs were fresh, feet were blister free :) but her stomach could not hold anything. It seemed like every 5min we would stop to regroup. My main concern at the time was to get here to the next aid station safely and talk to a medic. The medic did not seem to have any good suggestions other than her vitals were fine...Marisa made the right decision to call it a day. There was no way to continue another 40 miles without eating... so at around 11pm we drove down to the city to continue our last crew meeting point which was around 3:30am... On our way down the mtn. we were following Loraine's husband Bruce aka Zippy because he drove soo fast... anyhow he hit a rock and got a flat tire... we did not know how to use the jack so we all stared at each other for a few min trying to figure it out so Zippy was reading the car instructions... it was soo funny.
Once we were set up at the last meeting point we all tried to rest for a few hours then at around 7am we went for breakfast then waited at the finish for Lorraine- she finished at 1:40pm.
This was a fantastic road trip experience and we look forward to getting Marisa healthy and to go back next year to finish the race. Congrats Lorraine for you fine finish.
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