Tale 15 - Getting Serious to Shawatum
When
we reach Sumallo I pick up my veteran pacer, Liz. She got me through
the 70 miler, when my water bladder burst on my back overnight, and I
was stopping to pee every 5 minutes potentially due to hyponatremia. She's also my
cousin, and there's just something extra comforting about having family
out there with you.
We've now hit the point where I think I can actually make the cutoff times. My crew, on the other hand, was not quite so confident. As everyone loads
me up at the aid station, Chris is having whispered side conversations about
timing, and how fast Liz needs to get me to the next aid station to give me
enough time to finish. Most of which I'm entirely oblivious to.
The
day is cooling off, there's clouds and even some light showers, but my
body is just not ready to accept that it's cool outside.
Having
Liz with me is like having a personal cheering squad on the trail. She
would cheer me on even the smallest of runs and make me feel like just
moving a little bit faster was the greatest accomplishment.
As we
were coming into Shawatum I thought I saw a couple of people up ahead,
but I had to confirm with Liz since I'd hallucinated more than a few
people on the trail by this point!
This has to be another one of my favourite parts - she's like - I think those are horses! They were not.
Just people. Now I wonder which one of us had been out there too long? Hehehe.
We hit Shawatum in decent time, and the crew was there with a delicious pizza. Yum!
Liz,
despite asking to pace me through a section in daylight, takes me on
towards Skyline in the dark. To be fair, I was really planning to hit Skyline while it
was still light out - but you really can't control these things.
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