Thursday, August 16, 2018

Day 96

Currently, I am riding through the night in a fancy rental SUV at 80 miles per hour but feeling more like 60 miles per hour because our fun bus is so smooth. Of the many things going through my mind, most prominent is the realization that people aren’t kidding when they say Texas goes on forever. There is so much Texas. 

I’m heading to Leadville, Colorado for the Race Across the Sky, a 100 mile trail run (perhaps the 100 mile trail run) where one of the GOATS (Get On A Trail Shreveport—the group that made me love trail running on the regular) will be running, and the rest of us will be pacing and crewing him. We have a big job, but at least we do not have to run 100 miles. There are five of us in the car now, and we are meeting Danielson (another crew member) and Special K (our superstar runner) in Leadville tomorrow. I am so excited, which I hope will outweigh the altitude when we hit the trail. 

This trip has been dubbed my “PhD bachelorette”—a last road trip and adventure before I crack open my first book or download my first article. When my friend Catherine mentioned this trip to me earlier in the summer, I thought there was no way I could swing a road trip of this proportion so close to my first day of classes, but where there is a will there is a way. (I predict the way will involve coffee and/or energy drinks on Monday.) I don’t see myself reaching the level of fitness necessary to complete a 100 mile race on my own anytime soon, but I am happy to be able to help someone else achieve this amazing feat. I’m sure there’s an inspirational and meaningful lesson in there about how people who help others do incredible things will have the assistance they need to do incredible things when they need it, but I’m not going to take it there today. 

Something that made today great: jamming in the car from everything from Nelly to the Eagles to Paul Simon.



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