Crisis

In any good tale of adventure there comes a moment when the characters face a moment of crisis, something that challenges them as they consider whether or not to keep going. Going in, I expected that we would hit a wall somewhere after the first 24 hours of running when we would have to deal with the double fatigue of reduced sleep and tired legs. What I didn't expect was that the crisis would come shortly after I wrote my blog post about our first leg of the run. As we prepared to take the hand off from the other van load of runners, one of our own started throwing up. And she didn't stop. 

Earlier in the week, Amy had nursed her kids through a particularly nasty Norovirus (otherwise known as the stomach flu). That nasty bug had hunkered down and bided its time, waiting until this moment to hit Amy full force. The only thing worse than listening to someone repeatedly empty the contents of their stomach with violent heaves is making that sound yourself. It was awful. Not only did we need to get Amy off the course, we had to figure out what to do about her absence.

Thankfully, we were at one of the checkpoints and were able to work with the relay organizers to get Amy settled until her husband could drive up from Des Moines to bring her home. Initially she thought if she got a hotel room and rode out the worst of her sickness Friday night, she might be able to rejoin us on Saturday and help with the running. There was no way. Not only would that have been logistically complicated, it's no way to recover from a Norovirus.

So we did the only thing we could... we quit. NO! Of course we didn't quit. There was no grand plan, no extended strategy session for figuring out how to finish. We just acknowledged that we were going to have to run a little further, starting with the leg in front of us. We'd each pull 7 miles instead of the 5.5 that we'd been running. It wasn't impossible. But it wasn't easy either. I kept wondering when I'd our car waiting by the side of the road with the next runner. I could do seven miles now, but how would I hold up 24 hours from now when the crisis of compounded fatigue set in. 

The answer to that, it turns out, was easier than it seemed.