Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
30 kilometres instead of 10. My body and mind scream at me to
stop running. I ignore them.
My knee, the one that I banged in the Arctic, really gave me grief
today. I got severe shooting pains in it, and a few times it gave out on
me and I stumbled. I have to find a physiotherapist, fast. I also fear I
may have nerve damage in my neck, back and butt. I'm thinking that
I've lost so much weight that fat and muscle there have wasted away
and there's just bone rubbing on bone. I'm literally running on the
bones of my arse.
I wish we had more money. Each of the three vans has had to be
serviced three times since we started, at $2000 a go. And it seems that
every time we have a van serviced, in the following days a bunch of
new mechanical problems arise with it. I was under the van in the
pitch-dark the other night, trying to fix the generator.
There are very few fields nowadays where you can still be the first
persontoachieveagoal...thinkaboutit:Everything'sbeendone,
but no one [has] ever attempted anything like this . . . It's really
extraordinary. It's a real test of human endurance. But it's also a
reminder of what the human body's capable of . . . People come
out and run little stints, 3 or 6 miles, with me. People are looking
to participate and they want to get involved . . . They understand.
There's not much explanation needed, especially down here, down
South, because you guys know better than anybody about the
tornadoes and the effects that they can have on people's lives.
Pat Farmer, quoted in 'Pole-to-pole runner passes through
LeeCounty',
Opelika-Auburn News
, July 9, 2011
July 10
It's Dillon's birthday. He had let it be known that he was hoping for a
birthday feast of ribs, so finding a suitable restaurant on the route was
added to the crew's tasks for the day. We didn't find a ribs restaurant,
but we came across a casino in the town of Atmore and took over half
the restaurant there. The steaks were delicious. In the end, the food
didn't matter. We put the difficulties of the run aside for an hour or two
