The Zen of Ultra Running

Freezing rain, strong wind, numb hands/fingers. These pretty much sum my race experience at the 20 Mile Drop in Fairport Harbour today. This race was part of the Lake health running series. I was looking for a marathon on this weekend (April 13/14) but I could not find one close to home. So, I signed up for this race as it's at least a 20 miler, which I wanted to do as part of my long run. The day before the race I went out and ran 19 miles on the trail with D. (aimed for 4 hours and we ended up doing 4.5 hours). My legs felt fine but tired. I thought this would be a good back-to-back long run weekend after missing 2 weekends in a row due to work. The race started at 7:15am. It's a point-to-point race where the runners got shuttled to another town and ran back to the finish line where we parked. The buses left the finish line at 6:30. We had to wait at the start line about 30 minutes. Some waited in line for the porta potty. Luckily, someone opened a building in the mid