The Marathon - May 27

How fitting that on the day of the National Capital Marathon, my hometown race, Julia and I had our longest day, just shy of the full distance of a marathon. Today was awesome.
We woke up around 6AM and chatted with Bill from the PCTA as we ate oatmeal and drank hot cocoa and coffee. We talked about all sorts of things, especially teaching and he told us his wife's work involves music therapy.

After breakfast we packed up and headed up the road, opting for the full 10.1 mile road walk detour. It was mostly uphill, some flat, and then more uphill. It got monotonous. You don't have much to pay attention to when you road walk like you do when you're on trail. At one point we were walking uphill, heads down and just doing work, when literally out of nowhere, we heard and then saw this big animal (that looked like a deer, but moved differently) jump down from the hill to our right, only about 8 feet in front of us and then immediately over the edge on the other side of the road. We ran over and looked down, it was steeeeep.
I got a little weary because I figured something must have been chasing it for it to leap to it's death, but then we could see it way down below, and on its way back up the other side. Not sure what it was, an antelope? Gazelle? Are those possibilities out here. Can't imagine it was a deer. Wow.

So anyways, by this time we were already talking about lunch, but we wanted to make it to Messenger Flats Campground and be done this detour. That's exactly where we stopped for an hour and a half lunch. We each had mediocre calls home - satellite phone kept cutting out. After lunch we had 16 more miles to make it to our goal destination for the night, mile 444.3 and the Soledad Canyon Rd KOA. Our immediate goal was the North Fork Ranger Station. We put in our afternoon music / podcasts and smashed out some miles. They always feel effortless for a while and we can focus on something other than just hiking. A little while later after doing a lot of poodle dog dancing, we got down to the ranger station and filled up water. They have a cache there for hikers. We took a short break, but we both knew there were 8 more miles between us and a shower, and we wanted showers as it had been 5 days. These miles were slow. Some flat, then some downhill, then some climbing and then some downhill. Most people were
complaining about the downhills being hard in the knees, not me, but I do now have some minor blisters on each of my big toes. No big deal. About 2 miles before you reach the KOA, you can see it from way up on the ridge. It's painful. You switchback over mountains and go around others, seeing the campground come and go, knowing it's right there and all you want is to be there!! We arrived finally, and we came across Andrew from Australia who we hadn't seen since Idyllwild, and David and Britt who we met a couple weeks back. They gave us the run down on what's
what and we followed them to the office / store. $10 for the night, glorious. We made dinner and each took a shower.
After nearly a marathon hike (we'll get there) we were so happy to get to shower.

Oh, and tomorrow we have a measly 10ilrs to the Saufley's and Hiker Heaven. Another shower, laundry, Internet, resupply, fresh food, etc etc etc.

I missed being in Ottawa today, I love being a part of Race Weekend, working the expo and racing myself, but today was epic in its own right.