umstead race registration and briefing

camp lapihio


group photo


barbara, admas and rodger

emmy and pat

after an afternoon spent visiting my sister-in-law's house, my father-in-law's grave site, and hiking a small trail with my nephew, daugher and sister-in-law, pat and i arrived at camp lapihio, the race headquarters and start/finish area, at 4:15. i quickly took care of packet pick-up and i realized that the drop bags for the second aid station won't be to be collected tonight, but rather tomorrow morning. oops. i should have read the race instructions more carefully.

outside the main cabin, as we waited for the race briefing to begin at 5:00, we ran into barbara and greg, her husband. they introduced us to john, who had traveled up from florida to run the race. we chit-chatted about the course conditions and soon met up with fred and his wife. and a few minutes later, meredith, her husband eddie, and some of their friends arrived.

the only person missing and unaccounted for at that point was emmy. as we moved back toward the cabin for the briefing, we ran into admas and roger, fellow members of broadway ultra society. then we all made our way inside, taking seats on the wooden benches as blake norword, the rd, got the briefing underway precisely at 5. he and the various speakers covered a lot of important material and provided helpful information.

but the only issue on my mind, and probably everyone else's, was the lousy weather forecast for race day. one word covered it - rain. since there's nothing we can do about the weather, there's not much sense in getting stressed out about it. my only real concern was having enough dry clothes available over the course of the race - if the rain really did stick around the entire day.

after the meeting we found emmy at the back of the cabin. she had gotten a lift to the race site from some runners staying at her hotel. we took some pictures and then headed out, since we weren't staying for the pasta supper. i had dinner back at my mother-in-law's house and planned to make an early night it. giving myself plenty of time to dream of a dry race day - or at least a dry start to the race.

check out emmy's pre-race photos.

here are my race day photos and results.