Throw 6 women nearing the end of their 30's in a van for 30 hours to run a relay on little to no sleep, you have to know that there are certain topics that come up. I am sorry to report to the likely one male reader I have: sex, penis size and how awesome you are did not come up in the conversation. EVER. But we talked a lot about poop. And poop related issues. And gas. Must not forget the gas. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Once we reached our sleep station, the 6 of us laid down in a cold football field to get a little shut-eye, 3 hours or less. I am, and continue to be, blessed with the uncanny ability to fall asleep at the drop of a hat. On command. As Mark says, you'd think I'm borderline narcoleptic. I would be about the only human in our van with that ability. I believe I woke myself up snoring at one point, which likely only irritated my non-sleeping teammates.
The only trouble with sleeping for me was the giant stomach cramps I was feeling, mostly because I prematurely stuffed my foodhole with spicy chicken tacos mere moments after completing a 5.5 mile run in blistering heat. So my ability to sleep on command was both a blessing and a curse as everytime I woke up to feeling like I had to pass gas I feared it because I was positive I would simply shart. For those of you not "up" on the term, a shart is a cross between a liquid shit and a giant fart. There you go. Thankfully there was no sharting in my sleeping bag (though I did have to air it out considerably!).
I had a decent rest, compared to the other five ladies in my van, one of whom had literally fallen asleep about 15 minutes before we woke her up to run, and man did we have to hustle as our teammate from Van 1 decided to run sub 8 miles in the middle of the freaking night and thus was about 10 minutes ahead of schedule. Fine by me, I was already awake trying not to crap my pants, but our poor runner was tired. I am not entirely sure she woke up until mile 3, we literally dressed her, clipped on her blinky lights and sent her running with almost no time for her to wake up.
The middle of the night runs were awesome, and by runs I mean actually feet hitting the pavement, not the "runs" to the lovely and poorly named "honey buckets" that I endured for most of the night until my neighbor and team captain forced me to eat a banana. If you know me, you know that I have to GAG a banana down, I hate them that much. GAG. Ack. Barf. But with the promise that it would settle my stomach so I could run, I went for it. THANK GOD IT WORKED.
That said, most of the night we spent talking about poop and farts, the occasional hemmorhoid story and well generally discussed things that would make most any polite human blush. A polite human UNLESS they were running a relay, in the middle of the night, a teammate has the bends and you've had ZERO sleep.
It was on this part of the journey that I tried the "love stick". Oh the joys of the love stick. The love stick is the single greatest invention for muscle recovery. If you've ever heard the expression "hurts so good" that would describe how you feel about the love stick. It's this thing with handles on either end, with little rollers all the way down the middle. Pure. Awesome. That's all I can say. If not for the love stick and the sprayable biofreeze I likely would not have been walking at the end of leg 36.
But instead I rolled the CRAP out of my left thigh and ass (sorry ladies, you might not have known that part, thank GOD for clorox wipes) and I ran a significantly faster pace on leg 2 that I was predicted to run, or that I usually run, I'm just sayin'. All that after being doubled over in pain for most of the night. I was feeling pretty awesome, but not so awesome that I couldn't settle in for a couple more hours of sleep in yet another high school grassy area in the middle of Oregon somewhere.
All in all the middle of the night legs were really amazing, and I am so glad we had that part of the relay because the lest 6 legs were miserably hot and I think some of us may not have made it if not for squirt guns and frequent water stops. Stay tuned.....
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