December Finalethon: Reverse Mayan Ultra, Day 1 (12 mi) (AA)

Well, hi there.

You'll notice it isn't actually the 12th. That's because this month, as a special bonus, Our Fair 12athon Leader is allowing us--if we're dedicated enough--to attempt the Mayan Ultra again. The thing is, though, we have to do it in reverse. Also, it's a 50-point bonus, whether you do the Varsity (12-10-9-etc.) or JV (6-5.5-5-etc.) distance. So, clearly, why do the Varsity distance?

THE CHALLENGE, DUH. Or general weirdness.

So anyway, yeah, today I'm running 12 miles, but in order to kill myself a little more slowly, I'm doing the Slacker's 12-Hour Challenge: 1 mile an hour for 12 hours. As I type this I've already done two. I'm also doing the RUI Double-Fister with coffee spiked with Kahlua (mint juleps were getting tedious and I am so not 'wasting' my good GLBC Christmas Ale on this) and the Dirty Dozen, so I'm actually quite uncomfortable at the moment.

Well, okay, I did remove the jacket and a couple of hats so I could survive indoors but I'm still wearing three pairs of pants. I think if you would have found me in March, or whenever the last time I did the Dirty Dozen, and said I'd be doing it again in December, I would have laughed. But the high today is 46 and it was already above freezing when I did the first mile at about 7:35, so.

Anyway, it's like 10 hours later and I'm done now, so let's get to the important part: ridiculous pictures of me.

Here's sort of how I looked when I started:

And here's my coffee (still in the French press) and the Kahlua (still in the bottle, but shortly after that I poured it into a couple of travel mugs):

Believe you me, I consumed all of it.

Here, if I've managed to do it properly, is a series of pictures of my Garmin watch:

I'm going to post this picture an extra time because I would like to highlight my photo-bombing cat:

And here is a series of pictures of me, standing in front of the microwave mostly, for timestamps, holding various articles of clothing that I promise I was wearing before I got pictures:

Yeah, I'm well aware that it's too small to see the timestamps, but they're there. *sigh*

Here's what I removed, in convenient list format:

• A mitten
• The other mitten
• A balaclava
• A red shirt
• An Active Band headband, 12athon swag
• A pair of gray capris
• A knee sock (bought for a race, so it's running wear)
• The other knee sock
• A glove
• The other glove
• Another pair of gray capris
• ...and then everything else

So: Slacker's 12-Hour (24) + RUI Double-Fister (12) + Dirty Dozen (8), but I can't really figure out what the total points are until the 12th because who knows if I'm going to finish this or not.

And holy crap am I tired now. Also, I think I killed my shoes, and I saw greyhounds in between miles 5 and 6, but I've got eleven more days of blogging, so I'll talk about those things in the next couple days.

12 down, 66 to go!