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Day 4. Done. And unclear who was the winner in the cage fight. The day threw everything it could at us: inland heat, damp cold coastal fog, long grueling hills followed by eight miles of white knuckle descent, endurance challenges (88 miles and a good amount of climbing), and every kind of environment from long mountainous stretches to congested beach towns to agricultural fields to commuter traffic infested strip malls and shopping centers. Yeesh.

The whole day was a poorly written script. In addition to the erratic character development of the route itself, the dialog totally sucked. I had problematic interchanges with both Scott and Roger that seemed to last all day, plus there was some bonus off-screen suckiness when they apparently kind of got into it with each other. Sure, there were some true emotional moments but they mostly involved crying (or promising to cry later) at Rest Stop 4.

Hard fucking day. My quadriceps decided to take their displeasure to new levels, evolving into tree stumps of stiffness and pain. My sacroiliac joint now gives me a max of about 20 seconds of walking or standing before it pierces me into searing incapacity (the supreme irony being that it only hurts at rest stops which are supposed to be brief oases of R&R and are now just reduced to desperate stumbles to the nearest chair, or stump, or patch of dirt). Scott has been great at helping me navigate the rest stops and does just about everything he can (this side of the porta potty door) to make life easier for me, from filling my bottles, fetching my lunch, bringing me pop tarts, to making me ice filled socks to deliciously put around my neck. This fills me with a queasy combination of intense gratitude mixed with embarrassed vulnerability mixed with the residue of whatever bad dialog we’ve been having.

You know, lots of people go to the Bahamas or something for vacation.

Anyway. Fucking Day 4 is in the can. First time I have finished it ever, and I can’t say I feel particularly triumphant about that. I just slogged through its veneer of ugliness and maybe the best I can say is that I crashed and burned a hair more gracefully this year. Let’s call it a Pyrrhic victory.

Today: red dress day. Fun, colorful, and short. We’ll have a long restful afternoon, then a long day tomorrow. Then home. For the first time, it looks like I may ride EFl (every freaking inch) which would really be something. A doctor at the Medical tent told me I didn’t need to be a hero if this back thing is really troubling me, and I just looked at him and nodded like I understood. This isn’t heroism. The is just me blindly and ungracefully following the plan.