A Long Run

Well, it was a rainy day.... No that was another story, but yes it did start out that way. I had thought about doing a long night run for a while, but it wasn't until last week that I realized that I had a weekend where I could actually get it done, providing my support crew could make it too. And they did, Kev, Rick, Theo Roger, Tracy, Sandra, Terry and a guest appearacne by Chris B.
The plan was to run from home, meet Rick and Kevin downtown and then hit the rail trail all the way to Orillia, meet up with Roger and Theo and then run back, leaving Rick and Kevin in Orillia.
The run started well, Joan ran with me from home to keep to a nice slow pace, which felt good. Got down to meet KevO and Rick right on time and said our good byes to Joan and Tracy who'd driven Rick down and would offer support on the route as needed. The first thing I noticed was the humidity, it wasn't hot, but it was sticky. 8pm and we were on our way from downtown Barrie on the rail trail. Rick said that Chris Battaglia was talking of joining us, but we didn't see him at the Hooters parking lot, so off we went. But as we approached the Johnson's Beach parking lot there was Chris waiting for us, so he joined us to run a short 20k +. This was after doing the 5 peaks 12k earlier in the day, which Rick had done earlier. And they call me crazy!!!
From this point on we ran on talking as we went about probably nothing but running. I had packed pretty well everything I could think of in my Camelback including my cell phone for emergencies and if anyone felt the urge to call. As we approached the 4th line and Chris was preparing to turn around the phone rang. Sandra Lalonde had nothing better to do on a Saturday night than pick up with three guys running in the wilds off to Orillia and wanted to know where she could meet us, whihc is what she did at the 5th line. At this point the darkness was staring to settle in, so as we played with our lights trying to figure out if we actually needed them or not yet Kevin was giving us our pace information averaging 6:20/km with walk breaks. So maybe a little quicker than necessary, but we knew that that wouldn't last.
Tracy met us at the 11th line, although we could see her headlights from the 9th. It was rather eerie in the dark, not being able to tell distances very well or not being able to see anything beyond the 40 feet of the lights beem. We stocked up on what ever we needed, Kevin and Rick put in an order for Corona's with lime for their finish and off we went again.
As we approached the 15th line we noticed a cop car turn on its flashing lights as it stopped by the trail. We thought it might be us they were after, but Sandra said it was Terry, as he was going top wait here for Sandra and would be sitting in his car watching DVD's (what kind of movies was Terry watching???), we came upon Terry and rather cute blonde lady OPP officer and after an explanation of what we were doing and a few laughs we were back on the road, I mean trail. Having never done this route before, I found that the trail from the 15th line seems to go on forever. I thought from the description the Home Hardware would be just around the corner. Oh no, another 8k pipes up Kevin! I was struggling a bit at this point, it seemed it was taking for ever to get to Orillia even though we were "already there". One of the few "wild" animals we saw crossed our trail at this point. A white cat, I think kevin was scarred as he was very quiet then.
Finally we arrived at Home Hardware and met with relief team and my posse to get me back. A quick change of shirts, shoes and socks, refill of the camel back, a couple of mouthfulls of chocolate milk (a mistake) and we were off. Switching from trail shoes to road shoes felt very strange at this point, not helping my mental state. I was in serious doubts as to whether I would get another 5k down the road never mind 35k. We had arrived at the rendezvous at 12:01 am and left again at about 12:20.
The first couple of k were a struggle, but I put my head down and ran the 20 minutes of running and 5 minutes of walking was being widdled down and I had to tell Theo and Roger to expect to stop more frequently and for longer walks occassionaly.
We would walk and soon get used to Rogers' call "thirty seconds". Eventually Theo was calling him Sgt. Shultz. Each line seemed to become a beacon and step closer to finishing, but again it took along time just to get to the 15th and start the countdown. Before the 13th I got a 2nd wind, if you could call it that. I pushed hard and then saw lights, someone was waiting for us. It was Terry and Sandra, who offered me a ride back. If they had asked me about 5 minutes earlier I would have jumped at it, but I had a new jump in my step at this point. They told us they had left water at the 9th , so we had something else to look forward to. It was a long way from the 13th to the 9th, a lot of walking, but we did get to see an owl in a tree by the trail. Which we wouldn't have seen if we hadn't been walking.
At the 9th I sat down refilled my camel back and stayed sitting for a little bit, before heading back out. It was about this time that we laughed everytime Theo would say something, I would look over and blind him with my head lamp. This would happen regularly over the next couple of hours, getting the same reaction.
The longest stretches were between the 9th and the 7th and the 7th to the 5th no even number lines whcih dragged on, but in hind site we pushed it harder here, well at least Roger pushed us harder. A big step came in crossing the Ridge Road at the 4th line, this seemed like it close to home. Passing the parking area by the 1st line felt like we were almost there and we ran fairly hard at this point, amazed to see I could still run. We walked up Shanty Bay Rd. to Crestwood and dreaded running down the other side, but Sgt. Shultz drove us on. we passed to Barrie Cop cars sitting in the Johnson Beach parking lot who mustn't have noticed us until we entering the trail again, but then shone there spot lights on us. We thought they may chase us, but nothing became of it and we weren't going to out run anyone. As we approached the marked kilometre on Kempenflet Dr. Roger remarked about timing our second to last k and how funny it would be if we ran a 5:15k at this point, I wasn't smiling. But strange things happen and we did puch the pace and ran it in 5:23. After almost 50 miles! Theo's car looked like an angel waiting to take me away. I took off my socks and shoes, camle back and sat waiting fo the ride home. Roger decided he hadn't had enough and ran home.
We had got back to Barrie at 4:30ish. My watch said 9 hours and 11 minutes. Theo took me home and Joan met me at the door, "what would you like", "a beer" I said and a cold bath. I sat in the cold bath drinking my beer, finihsed it and had a hot shower and went to bed and couldn't sleep!
An amazing journey and great preperation for my hundred mile run coming in July. Many thanks to the crew, Rick, Kevin, Sandra, Tracy, Chris, Theo, Roger and of course Joan.