Picking up from last time –
I tried to be pretty cool and have generally good race etiquette, as I usually do. I don’t want to annoy people, and I want everyone to have the best possible time they can.
However, I made two faux pas… My first one was a little after the first mile marker. I know Spartan told us forty-thousand million times that it was going to be soooo hot and we needed to prepare more than we thought and hydrate more than we thought.
And I did! I drank a lot of water the day before and during the morning. And I thought that’d be enough. “Oh, I’ve raced in the heat before,” I thought. “It ain’t no thing.” Well, when we were just continuously going uphill (a pretty steep one, mind you) without it seeming like it was ever going to end, I got a little more tired and gross-feeling than I’d expected. I kept thinking I could make it to the water stop, but then I just kept not seeing a water stop.
I know it had only been a little over a mile when I was really struggling, and there are certainly not always (or not even often) water stops within the very first mile. And yet, I was just so hot and exhausted and cranky, already. (Aye, aye, aye. How was I possibly going to get through 12+ miles of this?)
Finally, I just yelled out desperately, “Does anybody have any water?” Some really nice man let me drink out of his camel pak, which I greatly appreciated. I didn’t drink that much, and he got to refill it somewhere in the next mile when we did get to a water stop. So, I’m sure he was fine and it was all fine. He was nice about it, and Spartans are wonderful sharers. So, I don’t think it was a wild faux pas, but I shouldn’t have to ask any people around me to worry about me… which I did one more time as my second faux pas.
At one water stop probably somewhere 7 or 8 ish miles in, I thought about how long I’d been on the course (how long it had been since I applied my sunscreen), and how hot I was feeling. I asked the man at the medical tent if they had any sunscreen. They did not.
In my experience, sometimes tents do. Sometimes they don’t. But it didn’t hurt to ask. Although, only after I asked did I realize how overworked that man was. I saw his face when he turned to me, and goodness he looked stressed. So, sorry about that! I was a little too focused on myself and unaware (until I heard the stories later) that he’d been dealing with people passing out all day. Eesh.
Anyway, another runner overheard me ask for sunscreen and gave me some. I think I took a bit too much. I was all, “oh yeah, my precious back/shoulders. Oh, mm hmm. And my cheeks. Yep, neck. Forehead. Ahhh, protection.”
I know those are all areas you normally cover, and that to cover my shoulders up to my forehead doesn’t really take that much sunscreen, but as I sprayed it on, I felt I was overusing a bit. So, I’m sorry, sir for using so much of your sunscreen. If you’re reading this, I owe you a bottle. Thanks for your help in my time of need.
And I’ll finish out the final post about this race tomorrow!