8 Hours of Addison Oaks

Lions and Tigers...oh my!

Thankfully, the doubleheader today is leading to the perfect opportunity to recover from yesterdays race!  I have stationed myself in a very comfortable position on the couch with my feet up as the afternoon rolls on...and I may or may not be wearing my new robe!

Addison oaks is by far one of my favorite local trails and I really enjoy racing there.

Josh and I decided not to bring all of our normal endurance gear since it would only be an eight hour event.  That in itself made the race seem so convenient because it limited our packing considerably.

Friday night my head felt like it wanted to explode as my body tried to fight off the impending head cold/sinus thing that everyone seems to be catching this past week.

I bumped up my standard process immuplex to try and ward it off.  It seemed to be working but it was leaving me in a half well and half not so well state of existance.

Anyways, friday night I came home from work...stripped out of my commuting clothes, changed into pj's and began spending some time on the couch.  Every half hour or so I would ferret my way around the house making piles of things we would need for the race Saturday.

Then, it was back to the couch.

By the time Josh came home I was ready for bed,  but at least I knew my kit was clean for the next day and my shoes and helmet were ready.

Saturday morning we awoke and started loading the truck.  My nose was running and the headache was still there...

I grumbled to Josh about my misery and he "gently" reminded me that by the time the race started I would forget all about it.

Suck it up buttercup...

We arrived at the race and were excited to see quite a large turn out.  We found a place to pit along the main drag and quickly unpacked the gear.

After saying our hello's to some of our fellow endurance peeps we were ready to go.

And it was all over it seemed in the blink of an eye...

One minute I was chasing the lead group trying to get ahead of the other female racer and the next I was crossing the finish to complete the eight hour event.

There were some less then glamorous moments that involved me inhaling bugs because I couldn't breathe without having my mouth open.

And it really was less then pleasant trying to swallow gel packets when you cannot breathe through your nose.

But overall it was one of my stronger performances this year.  I maintained an average lap time of 32-34 minutes and only accumulated a total of 7 minutes of pit time over the entire eight hour period.

Josh did a great job handing off water and food to me as I rolled through each lap and we even had a nice visit from our friends Spencer, Jen and Little B.

Now, I'm hoping to bounce back from this head cold so I can enjoy some of the beautiful weather this week...

AND...of course...there's the small matter of my Farley frame that arrived last week.  We will be building her up soon...EXCITE!