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Well the weekend at the AT100 went well. Got up to Lake Sylvia campground Friday mid-day to set up camp. After setting up, Andrea and I headed back into Little Rock to check out downtown. We ended up going to the Clinton Presidential Library which is down on the river. The museum was interesting and dense with information…. although we went through it pretty fast.

The next day (Saturday), we joined a small crew of Warthogs (Memphis running club) to set up the Club Flamingo aid station. After helping setup the aid station, I took my cross bike out for a ride partially to check out some of the Forest Service Roads that I might drive on later take to bring Andrea out to her pacing start point.

I ended up riding the course out from Club Flamingo to Smith Mtn and then cutting over to Chili Pepper. From the there, I went up and around to FSR 114 following FSR961 and looped back through the turn around on FSR2. After that I looped back to Chili Pepper.

About 2-3 miles after going through that aid station, my luck ran out and I pinch flatted my rear tire on one of the numerous rocks on the road. When stopping to repair the tire, I found I had 2 tire levers, 2 tubes, 3 CO2 cartridges, and 0 inflators…. so I put a new tube in the tire and tried to inflate it some. That off course did not work. In order to give some more structure to the tire, I tore off the valve stem from the first tube and stuffed it in the tire. It was better, but still not good. On this setup, I limped back to Chili Pepper (3 miles?), hoping to find someone with a floor pump. Fortunately there was someone there with one and we used my last tube and inflated it. Back in business!

Knowing that I only had no more tubes or way to inflate one in any case, I decided to head directly back to Club Flamingo. About 3-4 miles from Chili Pepper, I had another flat. Now I had only one thing to do, ride it back… The road 961 is not bad, but turning on FSR2, the road goes up, way up. That 1.5 mile stretch is mostly straight up. It was tough going… when I finally got back to Club Flamingo, I was dead. All in all, I was gone for nearly 3 hours.

Getting back to the aid station, the aid station was jumping. Andrea was to pace a runner from about 54 miles to 78 miles (Chili Pepper to Club Flamingo), but he ended up withdrawing well before that point. She was ready to run, so she wanted to go on a run. We decided to go for a run out from Club Flamingo towards Pig Trail and further. At first, I did not think we would go all the way out to Lake Winona, but we ended up doing it. It got dark on the way back and we ran most of that with headlamps with the glow sticks put out for the racers coming the other way. We saw the leaders of the race pass us (going the other way) on the last couple miles after refilling our bottles at Pig Trail. Those last 3 miles to Flamingo are much more difficult in the dark with all the ruts and rocks to deal with, plus it is mostly uphill. That run was a 15 miles which we got done in 1:20 out, 0:10 at Winona, 1:35 back in the dark. All in all, we did it in 3:05, which was a bit better than the 3:30 we ran the 15 at the forest the weekend before last.

After the 3 hour cross ride and the 3 hour run, I was beat. We stayed and helped with the aid station until around midnight, but had to call it night after that. It was a long day.