blisters & pictures...

So, on saturday My loving husband, brother, and myself got to do a killer 12-hour orienteering race in the Bernheim Forest, just south of Louisville. It was a BEAUTIFUL area, and a gorgeous day (albeit a little hot for our racing enjoyment.) We made an awesome start, with a lot of off-trail bushwacking into secluded locations. Dave got a good look at a huge deer that he'd disturbed where it had bedded down; it ran off too fast for Marke and I to get a look-see. But then a little further on in, we actually saw a black bear! Dave, being the front-man (by that time marke and I were flagging) saw it first, Marke caught the tail-end, and i only managed to catch the silhouette in between the distant trees. (It was loping fairly rapidly away from us.) Less than an hour later we ran into a park management guy who was helping out for a handicap-hunt they had set up. Poor park-use planning, but we had already come through the area and were on our way out. We found out later that they moved that checkpoint, and asked the other racers to avoid the area entirely.

At about that time, my feet were REALLY feeling it! Now,... i've done these 12hour races before, and have never had an issue with blisters,... but not THIS time! I think through a combination of not having trained enough (er,... or at ALL!), and having new shoes - i was just ill-fated. I put on some blister patches about 2/3rds of the way through, but by the time we finally got back in to the hash-house, i had blisters upon blisters. makes for a much more difficult recovery. Still, all-in-all, we had an awesome time! However, as per standard, we did forget some things - and this time, one of them was the camera. I would have loved to have gotten some pictures of the hills, forest, lakes, and landscape - it was just heaven!! I did hunt up some pics off the web; we had run into some photographers before the race, so i figured there had to be something out there!