Here is a link to Part 1.

01/11/2023:

think the reason why I got so behind again is this race. This specific race. There is/was so much to write and then getting and sorting all the images was a job of it's own. Remember that this is, at the end of the day, a labor of love. In this case, a huge labor. Typically though, once I start, it's like a diarahee of the mouth or in this case, of the hand.

Let me try to start at the very beginning though not that far. As to what this is all about, go and read the part 1. Don't need to waste time here for that. I will start with that Jamey and I kept procrastinating getting the hotel. At one point, I finally just flat asked him to do it. I just couldn't get myself to do it. He was so busy that he just wasn't doing it (no ill feelings here - life happens) and so I finally just did it. He was glad. I was glad. It was done.

Little less stress about it and that's good. They did have some email issues sending confirmations but I verbally confirmed multiple times that we have 2 rooms.

Fast forward and it's Saturday. Got my class coverage set up and got up early and did my things. Even walked the dogs with the wife. All good. I think Jamey was supposed to pick me up at 8am or so. Well, about 15 minutes before that, he calls me. He got a flat tire. Gonna take 30-60 minutes. Oy! My other car had already left and is unavailable but with the schedule we made, we can afford to lose 30-60 minutes. Well, he drove to Mavis and got it fixed. Took almost 2 hours. Finally he's on his way to me. As he gets here, I get a call from a Virginia number. Luckily, I ALWAYS pick up calls no matter what. I'm an emergency contact for different things. Anyway, it was the hotel. They don't have the room available... WHAT?!? Short story is, they took the reservation as 2 smoking rooms and they can only give us 1 smoking room and 1 non-smoking room. As I'm trying to carry my stuff to the car, I'm dealing with this... Got it all straightened out... We have 2 non-smoking rooms and we are on the way. Now that we lost 2 hours tho, we go straight toward the expo but since we are leaving later than anticipated, we hit traffic... Yay.

One of the emails that we got from MCM mentioned that the pickup at the expo "may take a little while" and while Jamey was driving, I checked on Facebook on and off. People reporting major delays at the expo. Things like, "I should have gone to the bathroom before getting on line ; already here waiting for 2 hours", were said. Seriously? We got there and looked for a parking spot and the lots are full BUT we suddenly spied a legal spot. I had read the FB posts to Jamey who decided that he cannot wait and went to pee behind a tree before we went in. I was nervous. We were in the car for a long time and now standing in line was not the way to go. That being said, the line moved VERY fast and within 10 minutes, we were inside the building. Picked up our stuff and walked around a little.

And now for the next piece of bad news because the whole a) flat tire, b) traffic, c) "we don't have a room for you" and lastly d) expect 2 hours delay getting into the building weren't enough, I screwed up... I thought I booked the same hotel that I used last time I did the 50K. Instead, I booked a hotel in the same vicinity as the half and 5 (read part 1) which in plain english, menat that we were going to be 50 miles away from the expo and the race. I thought that I got a hotel close to the start which means a quick Uber ride away. Major oops.

Remember that the race is stressful enough but this is pre-race stress and definitly not welcomed.

The hotel was beautiful. Let me say that... I had a kitchen and a living room and a seperate bedroom and it was beautiful and spacey and not expensive. At least that.

I asked Jamey to figure out the logistics for the next day. I just couldn't. He made calls. Hotels said that for $50, we can park in their lot but first come first serve kinda thing. Stressful stuff again... Jamey did more research thank God...

He re-re-re-read their emails and we decided that we would leave extra-extra-extra early and drive to the available public lots that are available and then get on the shuttle. Cool. Went to sleep early, stressing a little less.

We drove their in the AM and found a spot and got ready. From there, we walked to the shuttle and got a seat fairly quickly. The drive was short and uneventful. We got out and started walking. This year, they made a course start change and we were told to expect a longer walk than the last time that I did this race. Last time, I did this race, the walk was nothing. People were stressing about it this year because of the emails. Thankfully, ignorance is bliss, and their explaination as to how long and where, fell on (my) deaf ears. We went through a security checkpoint fairly quickly and walked. We walked. And walked. And walked. Unbelievable. We walked a little with Otto and then later we saw JC but we walked. Everyone, Jamey included, were joking that this is part of the race distance. We all estimated that we walked at least a mile in the dark. It was crazy. Really not sure why they changed it and why is it so much better than the previous time. I gotta believe that there is some benefit here.

Finally we got to the start. Jeez. I don't think that I can truly get it through to you, how long the walk was.

Went to the port-a-potty and took my little blue pill. We walked around a little to get the jitters out and to warm up a little. I then decided on one last sit down and went again to a port-a-potty. Thankfully, my senses are all fired up and I'm very aware of things. Right in front of an available port-a-potty was a piece of clothing. And a bad stentch that got worse as I opened the door. And then I noticed that the floor inside was a little wet. I mean the grass we were on was wet so that's to be expected but this was wrong. It was dark but my phone flashlight told me that that wetness was WRONG. Yeah... Someone (gonna try to say this nicely here) lost their bowels in their pants and all over the floor. The clothing I saw was underwear or tights and now everything made sense and I almost vomitted right there. I quickly moved away to a differnt port-a-potty. Thank goodness crisis averted.

Race started. I don't think they even played the national anthem tho I'm sure that the Marathon had it. In fact, the marathon had paratroopers parachuting in and a helicopter flyoverby an Osprey which is a very cool helicopter. All we had was just the cannon. Sucks to be us.

Jamey was annoyed that they kept calling themselves the "people's marathon" and that the 50K was the "largest Ultra".

In any case, we were off. We had cutoffs to make and that was the most important thing. As we were climbing, we on/off talked to people and leap-frogged with people as well. One such "frog" was a woman from North Carolina. She didn't really train for hills and hated the cold. We played leapfrog with her constantly. We made the first cutoff and made the left turn into the extra section for the 50Kers. A boring out and back and still leapfrogging with her. We turned around and continued on. I did see a woman wearing a Wonder Woman costume and I remembered thinking that if she's not careful, her breasts would fall out. I did find her picture from a previous year and posted in the images link.

Anyway, in a very not like us moment, we both decided to water a tree and this was only about mile 8 or 9 and our NC leap frogger past us. We continued on. We leap frogged her again. We are just doing our thing and then I hear her talk to someone behind us that she's doing a 200 mile race the following week. Hm...

Can you guess what was next? Asked her a question or 2 and more and finally told her to catch us already so we don't talk to her behind us. She did and we talked. Apparently her longest race to date was a 30 mile which a marathon that she got lost on and did bonus miles on. Hm... Long story short, we ran the whole rest of the race together... So, meet Rebecca "Becky" Lee.

In my opinion, she hadn't done her homework and so we tried to give her pointers and help and so and well we just clicked. It was awesome and as I said, we ran the rest of the race together.

I have a tendency to attract crazies. I mean crazies gotta stay together right? And so the 3 crazies ran together and we had fun during the whole damn thing. The conversations as usual were out of this world... We told her stuff. She told us stuff. I mentioned Wonder Woman and her breasts. She told us that her Ex-husband cheated on her while in Japan in an Army base (maybe Navy actually) with a beautiful Japanese girl who was both well endowed and was very obedient and that if she played that way, she would have gone after her. I love this woman by the way so far... Anyway, because of that, she upgraded her equipment and each of her girls cost her $3,000 of work. Whoa!

What else did we see??? We saw a guy running and carrying a table. I'll add the those pictures later but it was basically saying that 2 groups should stop fighting and killing people in his African Country and that they should come back to the table to talk about peace.

By the way, of the nice things about this race, is that they do have indoor plumbing in parts of the course. I stopped to pee and Becky tried but failed. The next one Jamey went and Becky tried again but the line in the ladies room was huge so I told her to try outside behind a bush. She tried but failed again. On the other hand, Jamey comes out like a little kid on Christmas morning screaming "I just lost 2 pounds....". I told you that I attract crazies, right?

On of the things we told Becky about was the little blue pill and she decided to try one. She mentioed something about that maybe it will help her with her needing to pee but can't issue and of course smart ass me immediatly remarked to Jamey that she's not a very good ER Doc if she thinks that the little blue pill will close that gate as opposed to the gates of hell that we are talking about... If you dind't get it yet, the little blue pill is immodium or a generic version as opposed to the other little blue pill...

On we went. We saw her family. We continued on into the blue mile. Sad section. Sucks... We got on and off the bridge which represents another cutoff. We were in DC proper and ran the gauntlet and made that cutoff too.

I can't remember if we saw Julia, pacer, at any point or not but I was hoping. After the gauntlet we saw her and I waved. She was doing the Marathon and we were doing the 50K. About a mile from the finish, she passed us. I think I could have held on to her but my guys were tired and we let her go.

In the gauntlet, I did spy a guy pouring coke and I made a beeline to him EVEN though he was in the wrong direction. It was warm but still good.

Anyway, to the finish and we were done. Yay... Got our medals. Got all our food and such. Took a picture with Becky but we were stupid and instead of using our phone, we let the race photogs take the picture. Now we have a crappy picture. Oh well.

Met her family, said our byes and went in search of a place to call Uber. Jamey sat down. He didn't feel well but he drank some gatorade which could be bad for him as we think he has a reaction to the coloring in it, and he felt better. Uber came and we went to the shuttle.

Jamey's friend asked for a ride and we thought he would take an Uber to the parking lot but instead we had to drive to him which made no sense but it's all good. From there, we went home...

On a differnet note, Becky did DNF on the 200 but she did well. It was hard. Carry O'Brien DNFed too and she's a force... It was a hard race. I'm going to link here to what she wrote on FB just to demonstrate to you, how awesome she is.