I tried running for 24 hours straight

Today I'm going to run for 24 hours straight. Why? Because my friend Jack is running 50 miles for his 50th birthday and convinced me to sign up for an ultra marathon. And because I'm crazy I guess. But I did run two marathons in the past if that counts for anything. I mean I think it does. Does it count? I don't know. This race will take place in a small town at a small park on a small sidewalk. During these 24 hours I only have four goals. Number one, don't die. Number two, run 30 miles. Number three, run 50 miles. Number four, don't die. The course is only a .59 mile circle which means that in order to get 30 miles I would have to run 51 laps, 85 for 50 miles. And if I'm feeling all extra and whatnot I have to do 105 laps to hit 62 point something miles or 100 kilometers. The race starts at 8 a.m. on Saturday and ends at Sunday at 8 a.m. Am I prepared for this? Did I train enough for this? And do I honestly believe that I can do this? Now it's time for the fit check. I'll have two main running fits. This first one is brought to you by Taco Bell which was the fuel that got me to this point. If you hit the subscribe button I will try to buy you tacos. The second fit is brought to you by Body Armor because I'm going to need some armor for my body to survive. Oh gosh. Oh that was terrible. Anyway, most of these things will be linked in the description if you're interested. Man, I woke up at 4 o'clock this morning and couldn't go back to sleep. So here I am an hour and 45 minutes before my alarm went off but it's okay. It's okay. Current feeling right now, I'm nervous, I'm excited, I'm tired, but we're going to get through this. I can't imagine myself running right now for like 12 hours from now but it's what it is. I'm just going to get out here and do this thing. I think the biggest thing is my pride is probably going to get the best of me. I'm like, I got to do this 30 miles. I got to do this 50 miles. Yeah, because I told people at some point I know I'm going to have to just listen to my body and just realize that, bro, you need to stop. So I got to the park around 7, 10 a.m. and met up with my guy Jack who had a nice tent set up along the course. I got my stuff situated and went and got my bib and goodie bag that had a t-shirt and some other stuff like knit something. We did a walk around to see what we were up against and my initial goal was to set an alarm every hour to give an update every hour, but they actually had a big clock displaying the time, which I ended up thinking, 50 minutes went by quickly and it was time to start. It was the most anticlimactic start ever. But hey, we were about to be out here for 24 hours and eventually I was able to start running and it was go time. One hour in, 23 more to go. Surprisingly, my knee's already hurting, which is not a good sign, but here we go. Hour number two. Two miles in, used the bathroom twice, eating a Rice Krispie treat, and the other knee is hurting now, but we're still rolling. I've reached the point where I'm like, what am I doing? Legs are cramping. Everything hurts. So to save you some time and myself some energy, after hour four I decided to update you every sixth hour. Oh, by the way, this was the course, just in case you're curious, and if you actually think I was able to run for 24 hours straight, then you're crazy, because I just can't. I don't know. One fourth of the way through. Everything hurts. Oh, man. I'm regretting this. During this time, I saw many of my friends come through and cheer me on and I was like, yeah, boy. Abigail came through and brought our dogs and I walked a couple laps with her, because I mean, your boy was tired, and I even ran with our Husky. I mean, running with her was more like she pulled me as I lifted my feet off the ground, which kind of held, kind of didn't, whatever. The entire time I was planning on changing my shoes and the rest of my fit at the 12 hour mark, which would have been 8 p.m., but I punked out and did it at 7 p.m. because I was already in so much pain and thought that changing my shoes would help ease some of the pain. Obviously, I was wrong. You can actually see how swollen my feet were at this point, but I slapped on my next pair of shoes and then I just went on. Past the 12 hour mark and Jack was at 49 miles or something like that, or he's at around 50. Abigail's with me, walking, because I'm walking and I'm in pain. The temperature started dropping and I had on two hoodies and hand warmers in my hands in my pocket. I usually don't do well in the cold, unless I'm shredding. Jack and I also discovered that you could totally hit the 100 kilometer mark, grab your metal, pack your stuff up, and do the dash. 14 hours in and it is so cold. Everything hurts so badly. I want to quit. I want to give up, but here I am. I got, I think, a little over 10 miles to go before I get to 62, but I'm walking. There's just no way. Yeah, I was miserable. My feet were swollen. My shins were hurting. My legs were on fire. My brain was gone. My dreads were falling. No, they weren't really doing that, but every step was a painful step closer to my goal and it was really hard to record myself, but I promise you this is exactly how I felt towards the end. I'm on the last lap. About to get my 100K medal, 62 miles, and then I'm going to sleep. I think the coolest thing was I was clearly struggling on the last lap and then I had this older couple who was just trucking along and here I am just barely walking, but they talked to me. I found out that we had a small world moment. We talked about South Carolina a little bit and before you knew it, I was on my last lap. I ran my 60th marathon. No, you're good. No, you're fine. You're fine. 60th marathon in ultra or ultra. Oh, wow. That's awesome. This is my 81st. Yeah, I'm going to stick around so I can go and grab my medal and stuff, but thank you. Thank you. So around 2 a.m. I finished. I packed my stuff up and drove home because I was done. Mentally and physically. Walking the next day was a struggle. My feet were super swollen and I felt like it was about to be a long road of resting and recovery. I felt like I should have been a zombie in the first season of The Walking Dead. I mean, seriously, this is almost a week later and I'm currently wearing an ankle brace on and off. Most of the muscles in my legs were sore, obviously, but the one that hurt the worst was the one that controls your foot from going up and down like that. It's called the tibialis anterior muscle. Now, currently, my right leg is good, but my left leg, nah. I tripped over a rock around like hour 16 or something like that when I was in miserable mode and that, yeah, that hurt. Here's some random stats if you're curious and there's probably more that I'm leaving out, but hey. I think the biggest lesson I've learned is you gotta be prepared. Be prepared. It was an experience that I'll never forget. I technically walked, so I guess you could say that I failed this challenge. But maybe if I really wanted to, I could like train up a little bit, you know, talk to some ultra people, you know what I'm saying, get out there and do the run, maybe get 100 miles. I don't know. But if you were to ask me right now if I would do this again, the answer would be...