The Raven's Roost

Turkey Day passed quietly and uneventfully here - since Fox and I don't go visit family we had nothing to fight about. Oh noes :D We also don't have mountains of leftovers because I didn't cook a massive spread for just us. We do have a lot of smoked turkey, some of which is going into the freezer pretty shortly.

Today is mostly getting prepped for the trip to Cocoa. Since we're staying one night, we don't need to pack much. After the race, I may just change back into Saturday's travel clothes, but bring a clean pair of my warmer sweatpants, since it will be cold here when we get home. More important is running gear. Yesterday I washed both of our Osprey vests. Fox doesn't typically care, but I don't like to smell myself, and my vest smelled gross.

I have a couple of Bumkins snack bags that I can carry in my vest. Each one will hold about 2000 calories worth of homemade energy bar crumbles. It doesn't stay in nice bars once I'm running, but when it breaks up, it forms one- or two-bite nuggets, which works out just fine for me. Two bags = around 4k cal. Hydration pack with homemade Tailwind (Gatorade, sugar, and electrolyte powder) is another 1800 cal. Plain water is on the course. This is way more than what Garmin says I burn running a marathon, but I'm not trying to lose weight, I'm trying to avoid bonking. So eat up. I'll also be carrying extra vaseline for chafing, some GU for concentrated carbs though GU is on the course, and my phone for tunes.

Aside from that I don't have a ton to do today. Rather than try to stay "busy" to feel productive, I may simply conserve energy and nap, play video games, etc. I did some writing on Lora this morning and I'm about 2500 words in.

I don't have any "Black Friday" shopping to do and I'm generally avoiding the promotional emails and just deleting everything each morning. It would be different if there were big purchases I needed to make, but I don't really need/want anything. I'm considering buying myself a collected edition of Saga from bookshop.org but that's about it.

 My previous post mentioned that Fox and I are okay, and that was an important point I wanted to make in case anyone was reading on some of the unofficial runDisney sites, because the marathon yesterday was abso-fucking-lutely brutal. 

I've run three marathons so far, and they're not easy, just by definition. 5ks are easy. Marathons are meant to be challenging. And in the previous two I've had moments where I wondered if I could finish, "fuck it" moments where I was convinced I wasn't going to finish, and times when I've had to just find something else to focus my attention on and run through some serious discomfort and pain. So if I said yesterday was tough, that could easily be put down to my relative lack of experience at that distance. 

So far as I'm aware, no one died, but Fox and I each saw four people go down and need medics on the course. I saw one lady twist or injure her knee and just faceplant right into the asphalt. Fox saw one guy who was already on IV fluids, and he may have been the same man that I saw who was being tended to by some other runners, but medics hadn't made it to him yet and he looked ... honestly if he hadn't been breathing so hard I'd have thought he was dead. Then there was a collapse just after the finish line. The heat and humidity took a toll on everyone, though, I see a lot of longer finishing times in the results. I ran an unspectacular 6:15 but I knew after the first five or six miles that this was not going to be a race to try to PR, and my mantra became "just finish, just finish." I walked a lot, and when I was running it was not fast. I took doubles from the powerade and water stations and was so on top of my hydration that I had to make four potty stops. I was annoyed at myself for needing to go pee since I can usually hold it, but then I thought, if I didn't need to go I'd be worried about dehydration. Hydrate or die-drate. I also don't want to see the inside of a porta-potty again for a while. 

BUT, all that aside, we both finished! And Fox completed his first official Dopey Challenge! We don't have a lot of pictures because getting our phones out of soggy, sweat-soaked running belts was annoying, and also because sometimes when you finally get started running again, you don't want to stop while you have momentum. I did get a picture in Animal Kingdom with "Sparkle Poptart" the opossum, who was cute as hell and I love dearly. They also had a macaw, a goat, and some sort of "chubby tailed" lizard that I'm sorry I didn't stop to see. Since we were in backstage areas, we also both got a chuckle out of the warning signs posted on habitats where big cats live. Those boiled down to "kitties will eat  u" And while standby time was only 10 minutes for riding Expedition Everest when I passed, I was paranoid enough about my time that I didn't risk it. I never actually saw the sweepers, but I worried that if my ability to run gave out and I had to walk it, I might not be able to keep pace. 

And just after Fox and I got out of Blizzard Beach, they closed off that part of the course, shaving about two miles off. I think at that point there were red-flag heat warnings. And now I wish I had more to say about funny spectator signs or costumes, or anything else, but I had my head down for much of the race, just focusing on putting one foot in front of the other. OH - wait, I did see one cute thing. Three guys dressed as Huey, Dewey, and Louie were stopping for photos with "dapper" Donald and Daisy near the Grand Floridian. That made me smile.

So we're finally home, alive, but tired. I'm definitely getting out my yoga mat tonight. The cats missed us (of course) and the sitter took good care of them. Water's full, boxes relatively clean considering she comes in the evening, cats in good shape despite their nervous habits when we're gone. I'll get a photo album together and share that later this evening, right now we're waiting on our official race photos to process. They're having some problems with the Photo Pass system, too.