Beating down on Boogie

"Deceptively difficult" are two words that are banded about fairly frequently – especially by me. When it comes to The Boogie, there is no "deceptive" about it. Boogie doesn't hide its difficulty, it is glaringly obvious. 6pm start, hilly road course, rural NC in mid-June. It is most certainly a departure from normal.

No shocks about the weather forecast; "Hot, humid, possibility of thunderstorms". You could write that just about every day from the late spring all the way through the summer.

No shocks about the actual weather either – after all, it was all forecast….. hot – yep; humid – yep; thunderstorms – yes indeedy.

After last year's "Bolloxing of the Boogie", my goal was simple. Finish. Sub-goals were to run smart, and finish. Finish. FINISH!

Two years ago was my first Boogie – I did the Baby Boogie, or just the marathon, last year, I upgraded to the 50, and felt like I had a PR in the bag before I had even started. LOL@ME. The Boogie bit me so hard in the ass, and taught me a serious lesson about overconfidence and disrespecting the race and the course. I will never make that mistake again.

Let's go through some highlights:

• So many friends – two years ago I did this thing, and knew nobody.
  
• A t-shirt that fits – they run small, very small I remembered to go XXL
  
• Talking of shirts, Mark gave me my new MTC shirt that I will wear at Tahoe
  
• The moon – so bright early on during loop three
  
• The storm – I loved the storm, the cooling rain the lightning, the thunder. I just turned my light off and enjoyed the show. It became so very dark. I remember one flash of lightning, where some guy just appeared maybe 6 feet ahead of me, it was very spooky just being only able to see more than a couple of feet only when the lightning flashed.
  
• Charles Akers and Amy Surette getting their first 50 mile finishes. Awesomeness, lots of awesomeness
  
• Frank Lilley plugging away, and getting the finish
  
• The volunteers who couldn't do enough for me
  
• So many other people running strong races
  
• Stealing Mark's beer.
  
• Bad day for electronics – my Garmin finally died after about 5000 miles of use. RIP. MY mp3 player also temporarily crapped out. So I listened to tree frogs for a while. That was OK, but it doesn't move me as much as some good old fashioned loud punk rock music.
  
• Seeing no snakes.
  
• Killing two deer fly in the last couple of miles
  
• Pacer Amy taking me the last few miles fuelled on Fat Tire and Blue Moon ;)
  
• Running smart and finishing the thing
  
• My awesome finishers mug
  

So, to sum up, like every other MTC run I have done, this was a great event. It was good TRT training to run through the night, and I am pleased with how I approached the race. TRT has to be approached in the same manner, in that it is all about the finish, and the only way I will do that is to run smart and approach the race without being stupid.

Talking of stupid, I just signed up for the Chatooga 50k next weekend. Actually, that's probably smart.

Me at 46 miles (Thanks Ricky for the picture)