Carolina Century 2009: Fuzzy Llama Funny Llama, Llama Llama Duck

As you can tell from the title, this is probably going to be an aimless and bewildering report. The past three days have left me in a daze!

Oh I just don't know where to begin! So many things have happened since Saturday that I am having trouble believing.

Unbelievable Thing # 1:

The weather forecast for Saturday remained consistently miserable the entire preceding week. I usually think that they can't call exact times and rainfall amounts four days in advance. However, by Friday it was clear to me that the forecasters didn't have any reason to change their minds and predict dry, sunny weather. I lay awake Friday night into the wee hours of Saturday, listening to the wind howl and acorns bounce by the limbfull onto the roof. Between feeling like a loser for planning to skate in gusty rain, and feeling afraid that nobody would show up, sleep wasn't happening. 

How wonderful that 40 - 50 people signed up to take part! 

Unbelievable Thing # 2:

I have no roadrash, pain, sores or aches.

Unbelievable Thing # 3:

The skies opened up sometime in the first third of the course and we got drenched. And yet four of us still finished the 102 miles, 7 hours later (3 skaters, 1 cyclist). The sideways rain, zero visibility and wind gusts sure were interesting. How great it was to see Roadskater's cousin and her husband waiting out there in the torrent for us at their rest stop! I remember standing cluelessly in a three-inch deep puddle, talking to them. This was about the time Ben the Cyclist decided to stick with us for the 102 miles. 

Unbelievable Thing # 4:

Coming home along the final four or five mile stretch, Roadskater was having compelling leg cramps. Skating carefully in front of him to try to provide a wind buffer, I heard him making a scarier noise than the usual cursing when attacked by sudden leg cramps. These were foreign, high-pitched sounds I couldn't quite attribute to insanity or agony. I turned around to see him leaping a ditch to snap photos of a field of sheep and llamas! I had the Llama Song playing endlessly in my head after that.  

Unbelievable Thing # 5:

I don't even have Muskelkater for having skated 102 miles! This may be attributed to sleeping for 12 hours straight Saturday night through Sunday morning :-)

Of course the most unbelievably stupid, enragingly frustrating thing of all was that a local cyclist (who wasn't a Carolina Century rider, but who cares) was killed by a hit-and-run about half a mile away about the time we finished.  Our BRT/SAG Danny went to the scene to try to help but it was too late. The situation hardly seemed real.