Am I a bad person?
Today, the Canadian Death Race ended. My friend, Mike was running it. Mike is a person I am very competitive against. I failed to finish the Sinister 7, the first time I had ever failed to finish an ultra. Mike did finish. So he remained undefeated. This left me feeling like I was on unequal footing with him. If he has something over me, I don’t feel I am on the same level.
I think there was a Community episode about this.
Mike however did not finish the Death Race. From the reasons above, it is clear a large part of me didn’t want him to finish. But I did want him to finish. I would have bet money on him finishing. I know the suckage that happens when you don’t finish an ultra. Not much immediately, but it grows over time.
It does make it clear that it is good I didn’t do the Death Race. Four weeks is apparently not enough time to recover from an ultra.
I did however, go out and run 58.4km today. I wanted one last long training run before Mont-Blanc. I had a route planned out that would have taken me all the way to the Anthony Henday bridge. However, 28km in, as I was nearing Terwillegar park, I came across a large puddle. As soon as I stopped to contemplate my options, I was attacked by a lot of mosquitos. That’s when I decided that Terwillegar park is probably going to be very similar to this one spot. I turned around and decided to retrace my route. Including all the long-cuts I had done to keep the distance true.
It got rather hot. Thankfully, there is a COLD water tap in Hawrelak park that I soaked my head in. But still, it was a long trip home.
Only I didn’t go directly home. I ran past home to go to a Subway restaurant. I wish I had been five seconds faster. Just as I was getting there, a gaggle of four women were entering. Be polite and let them in first. And I didn’t have the energy to fight them. So I was waiting what felt like ten minutes before I could order my sub.