Aftermath

I've had lots to think about since last weekend - more like, lots to deal with psycho-emotionally. I needed this LT100, and I knew I could go 100 miles non-stop, and I still know it. Whether or not I could have completed it in the allowed 30 hours is un-knowable. So much can happen in the length of miles and hours of a 100-mile race, but the closer to the finish we all got, the slower we tended to go, the less airborne we tended to get, and coincidentally the less chance of injury. I was unstoppable.
But an incident occurred on Powerline Road that gobbled up so much time, it pretty much screwed any chance I had of getting through Mayqueen before the cut-off. And so that's how things eventually did pan-out.
The person involved feels very, very badly about their part in it. It's bad enough that I lost my LT100 in such a freakish way. We're so used to the normal reasons like, getting lost, or bonking, or lost morale and the will to go on, or injury, or ... But it was none of the above.

In the aftermath, I've gone through a demoralizing process. In order to deal with what happened and how it happened, I've had to adopt a certain degree of not caring - lest I become bitter or resentful. And in not caring, I've been tempted to stop blogging or running with other people.
I skipped the Thursday trail run because I don't want to talk about last weekend. I don't want to answer any questions. I want everyone to zip it. Let's just run. So I'm hoping time will add so many other activities for others to talk about that they won't remember to ask me about the LT100, and I won't have the burden of weasling out of telling.

I might end up telling the whole story. The person involved has told me their part. So I figure I'd tell it by walking everyone through the events, with his version and my version, color-coding his paragraphs. Neither of our versions conflict, but you'd have to get both versions to see the big picture.
But would anyone care to read it? Too many details, and it would seem to me that only myself and the other person would care. I'd have to spend so much time working to shorten it to a readable length, while not leaving out too many details.

Certainly, within ultra-running circles, it is a story of epic shit-happens. Maybe there's nothing to learn from it? Maybe there is?

Either way, I'm certainly having a hard time caring about much of anything. I still love trail running, but I'm camping with my son this weekend. What I really need is a really long solo trail run and some solo camping. I need to watch the trees grow and the rocks move for a while.