WTF was I thinking?

So I really did walk 100km, aka 62 miles, starting at 6pm on a Friday night somewhere in eastern Germany, of my own free will.

A print-out of the distances with my times between checkpoints, a certificate, and this pin were the tangible things that I got for my trouble. Well I guess you can include blisters and the fact that I will walk funny for a few days.

The hike is limited to 850 people. I'm pretty sure 849 were German and I knew none of them. Talk about alone in a crowd. As you might imagine if you thought about these orderly Germans a bit, we were all issued microchips that were scanned on departure, several places along the way, and at the finish. I know, to the second, how much time I spent on the trail. Exactly 19hrs 3min and 58seconds.

As we all fell into our pace and headed up to the hills, the crowd thinned a bit.

We had enough traveling before getting to the single track that we were very well sorted. It was a beautiful cool evening for hiking. The sun set, the full moon rose, the headlamps came on and we kept on walking.

Food and drink rests were a great place for me to get ahead of the crowd. I filled up my water, pounded a few cokes to stay awake and didn't linger. There was almost nothing I could eat anyway so I brought my own and ate on the run. The first 21km clicked by at 15min/mile, the next at 17 min/mile. That was literally a blistering pace, and at the 42km food stop I did a little surgery and changed socks but felt pretty damn invincible. The night was cold and clear and moonlit. The city lights at night were great. By morning I was getting a bit stiff. This picture was at 62km and was the only place I stayed and ate some cheese and gluten free bread at a table. That was still less than a 5 minute stop.

By 70 km any heady invincibility was crushed, but I kept walking. Between 77 and 85 km I dragged my ass along at 24 min/mile, my slowest pace, but that short stretch had included a few minutes spent doing more surgery.

By not stopping much I got ahead of the pack and spent much of the last half of the hike walking alone with my thoughts and aches.

I picked up the pace again for each of the last two sections, mostly because the finish kept getting closer and I wanted this walk to end.

Kristi and the kids were waiting to walk the last 200 meters with me and they were a great sight
to see. Kristi grabbed the camera out of my pocket, ran ahead and snapped this picture. I usually figure 20 minutes/mile as a pretty good walking pace. Overall I averaged 18.75 minutes/mile including stops and though I haven't seen the placing, I doubt that there were more than 40 people ahead of me. The cost was enduring the last 8 hours which ranks right up there as one of the most physically and emotionally challenging experiences of my life, but the intangibles somehow make it all seem worth it in this clear light of the next day. But if you ask me if I'd do it again, you will hear me say, "no f*cking way!"