We arrived at Palo Duro Canyon's Sagebrush campground on Friday afternoon. Allison's father and his girlfriend, Renee, came up from Lubbock with their ultra-comfy moblie basecamp, a 36-foot, four slide fifth wheel camper.
We took a bit of the afternoon to scope out the course and aid station. The lack of a “you are here” arrow and a compass rose made it difficult for me to locat where we were on the map. I eventually figured it out.
6:00pm and 72 degrees. Nice weather but a bit warm for running for my tastes. Thankfully, the next day we had high clouds for most of the morning.
Don't stray too far from the trail!
I ran with a 20oz hand bottle and one could say I recently experienced medical problems. I'm happy to be alive.
The canyon is very scenic indeed.
When they refer to wild turkey in Palo Duro Canyon, they may not be talking about the whiskey
Turkey x-ing!
The start/finish chute at the Juniper day use area
Pretty bitchin' light accentuates the colorful soil and rock on Friday evening
Calm water in the stream that crosses the road through the bottom of the park. Seeing this view, I could totally picture myself running through here...
Yeah, that's exactly how I pictured it!
Fall colors too
The course map according to me and my GPS. The 50k run does a loop on the lower portion (red) of the big figure eight and then does two loops on the full course. The 50 mile course does the full loop four times. Ouch.
The race started at 7:00am in the full dark. I used a hand flashlight on the trail for the first 30 minutes. This is taken at 7:45am as things brighten up.
Sweet, sweet hydration
Running into the Janda and Lyle's aid station for the first time at 9:10am
Completing the first big loop at 9:43am
That looked like fun and much easier than running around the canyon
Allison and I take a moment for a photo at Phil's aid station at 10:26am. Allison did a great job of crewing for me
Coming into Janda & Lyle's for the second and last time for me. I was definitely hurting a bit here, mile 28.
New Mexico over Texas!
Coming into the finish chute
Finishing up in 5:09:15. Results haven't been posted yet but I think I finished in 8th place overall.
In the afternoon we noticed the Dukes of Hazzard were in the neighborhood. Yeehaw!
Sweet finisher's hat
