Day 17, May 23, 2011 Near Shediac to just before Moncton 32.43km
23 May
Soooooo tired.
I need to sleep more, 6 hours in not enough after 60km. I could barely get out of bed this Victoria Day.
Duncan and Heather had gotten up early to make us breakfast; scrambled eggs, ham, toast and orange juice. Delicious! We left late, around 8am for the drive back to my starting point. I really didn’t fell like running today. I felt exhausted and all I wanted to do was climb back into bed.
Instead, I changed into my running gear and set off at around 9:30am for my first 20km. Slowly. Very slowly. It didn’t help that there was a pretty strong headwind all morning. Today my feet felt fine but it was the rest of me that wanted to stop running, which I did at every excuse, to adjust my shoes, take photos (of a giant lobster billboard entering Shediac), anything. Just as I finished my morning leg Heather, Duncan and Eli showed up, right there at the km 25 marker sign on the highway.
I stretched a little and we all drove into Shediac to check out the world’s largest lobster. It really was huge, and like all the world’s largest things, a little random. I had decided that I was only going to do 40km today, thanks to successfully stalling all morning, and utter exhaustion. So we had some tortellini and a quick 40 min nap that I would have liked to stretch into hours.
Driving back to km 25 I was dreading the afternoon run, but I had stalled as long as I could and so got back into my running gear and headed out. Duncan and Heather had left signs for me on the km 25 sign and the km 24 sign as encouragement.
The highway from Shediac was busy and noisy and the headwind was draining, despite being at an angle. It only got worse when I turned off onto the highway to Moncton and directly into the headwind. My pace slowed, each step became a challenge and all I wanted to do was stop.
I did stop, at 32km, 8 short of today’s revised goal. I was disappointed that I couldn’t finish but I was completely out of energy.
I sat quietly during the drive back to Heather and Duncan’s thinking about how I hoped I didn’t have many other days like this where I was too tired to finish. Luckily I have the next two days off as we are driving into Halifax to meet with Prostate Cancer Canada and so I can do research at Dalhousie.
Two cheeseburgers later it was 9:30pm and I was saying goodnight to Duncan and Heather (and Eli, their very cute 1 year old son) after once again enjoying their hospitality with dinner, laundry, shower, WiFi, and a warm bed.
So tired, and so happy to be going to bed!
