Heat Exhaustion

Well, I ran the Butte-to-Butte 10K again this year. I was a little anxious, because I really didn’t train as well as I had last year. But I really wanted to beat my previous time. I had done a 4+ mile run, the last mile uphill, a week or so ago and I felt good at that point. But I hadn’t run 6.2 miles since last year!

It was a lot hotter this year, too… whew!

But… my bib number was 7. How lucky is that? It’s my lucky year, after all, a 7lb-7oz baby born in 1977!

The race felt tougher, some combination of being less trained, hotter, and pushing myself a lot harder. But I did it – my finish time was 1:04:33. That’s a 10.4 minute pace, a whole minute per mile faster than last year! Woo-hoo!

Note to self: don’t try to go out to breakfast on race day. I had to wait what felt like several hours for my egg-topped-bagel breakfast and as BN can tell you, I’m quite the cranky camper when I’m starving!

I felt a little better after I ate, but after my shower all I could do for the rest of the day was lie helplessly on the couch. I was so, so, tired! I’ve never felt so exhausted. It was like a concentrated exhaustion, different from how I felt after 52 hours of being in-the-air-on-the-road in transit to Nepal. Different from how I felt after hiking in the High Sierras all day with BN. My mind wasn’t exhausted, but my body felt like it didn’t want to move.

I did manage to make buffalo burgers with sweet potato ‘fries’ for our 4th of July dinner. They turned out yummy!

After that we drove up a back road and walked a little ways (fortified by red meat) to a somewhat tree-blocked but fairly good view of South Eugene. Everybody and their brother was setting off fireworks, all over town, many seemed larger than legal. Also the minor-league baseball stadium had a medium-sized show that we could see.