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<\/a><\/p>\nThe added bonus of the location was that I could stop by and see one of my oldest friends who lives in Charlotte, NC.\u00a0 We traded texts and he said he should be around… though when I sent an ETA for post-race arrival he’s gone all radio-silent.\u00a0 Hmmm… guess I’ll find out tomorrow at 2 PM if he’s home or not.<\/p>\n
But that’s all AFTER the race.\u00a0 And today was all about the 9.5 hour drive up to the race… which turned into 10.5+ hours due to traffic and various whatzits.<\/p>\n
Driving along the rolling hills to get to the packet pickup, I realized the course itself would involve a lot of the roads I found myself going up and down and all around.\u00a0 Double checking the marathonguide.com reviews, I vaguely recalled this warning from a past participant.<\/p>\n
This isn’t a race you just decide to do at the last minute, eh?\u00a0 Clearly this person underestimates my stupidity!\u00a0 Nobody should ever underestimate my stupidity!\u00a0 If I could remember my BC Calc, I’d really be able to wax poetic on how my stupidity is a limit that approaches infinity, or maybe it’s a divergent series, or, well, hell — I don’t know.\u00a0 It’s a null set?\u00a0 Or maybe it’s just that the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides.\u00a0 Or how about “What did the acorn say to its mother when it grew up?\u00a0 Geometry!<\/span>”<\/p>\n So anyway, I’m here in North Carolina, not too far from Boone, and I’m picking up my bib in this field:<\/p>\n I haven’t bothered to look at the course map or check the elevation — what difference does it make now?\u00a0 I hear it’s not about preparation, it’s all about attitude.\u00a0 That’s how you meet with a morally suspect dictator if you’re a… well… morally suspect wannabe dictator.\u00a0 So I’m just gonna wing it.\u00a0 That should totally work our just fine.<\/p>\n I’m spending the night in an AirBNB about fifteen minutes from the aforementioned field, and it’s… well… it’s messy.\u00a0 The host wasn’t available as I arrived smack dab in the middle of my texted ETA of 6-7 PM.\u00a0 Her son let me in but one of their dogs, a new puppy, was super excited to have another person in the house and she, well, she scratched the bejesus out of me.\u00a0 Is bejesus sacrilege?\u00a0 I don’t know and I don’t care because frankly in my head I was screaming bloody murder only instead of “bloody” in the literal “blood spatter on the walls” it was the British slang “bloody” and replaced the British slang with American slang as god’s son’s middle name, a term that back in the day was one of the seven words we weren’t allowed to say on television.\u00a0 That’s probably way more detail and way too wordy but do the math people and you can figure out what I was saying in my head.<\/p>\n But aloud I just told the hosts it was okay and tried not to make it a big deal.\u00a0 I did ask for neosporin but unfortunately the hostess, who showed up a bit later having emerged from her bubble bath (!!), is allergic and thus doesn’t have any.<\/p>\n Where am I?\u00a0 What am I doing here?<\/p>\n For future reference: this is the puppy who draws blood:<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a> <\/a> <\/a><\/p>\n