Rainy night camping at the WWC

With the Tread Nightly/Brightly races less than 10 hours apart, the WWC team makes an exception to their no camping policy and allows those running in either of the event to stay on the WWC grounds. I had enjoyed the experience so much that I did it again this year.

Check-in and my tent setup went by pretty quickly considering that I hadn’t had my tent out since last summer. New this year, I updated my camping amenities to include an air mattress. I even remembered to inflate it inside this tent when is a good thing. No way was it fitting through the opening.

Then, I headed off to get ready for the race.

That’s when the storms rolled in to the area.   

I didn’t make it back to my tent until after the race. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was worried. I didn’t know what I would find. Worse case, I could bundle up my stuff and sleep in my car.

After a nice shower to clean off what felt like 10 pounds of mud, I grabbed my dinner, and I headed back to my tent. Side note here, I was running my Hoka Eva. I have never had this happen before but my shoes so soaked that the blue Hoka colored dye went through my socks and colored my feet. Like I said, I have never had this happen before.

Getting back to my tent, I peeled back the opening and peered inside. Water had definitely gotten inside, but my stuff had been on my air mattress. It was pretty much dry. At least dry enough, I crawled inside and ate a quick bite before heading off the sleep.

I had forgotten that the how bright the lights around the channel can be. I also remembered how much people talking wakes me up at night.  I don’t know who the two guys were that were talking but I heard all about their race at about 2 am in the morning.

This was not my best night’s sleep ever but it was good enough to get me ready for the next day. I rolled out about 5:50 AM to a steady heavy drizzle of rain.

All my stuff was soaked so I basically rolled it into a ball and took it back to my car. I would worry about it after the race.

Later Saturday afternoon, I spent about 2 hours laying it out and drying it out off. Two days later, my tent was finally dry enough that I could put it away.

Would I do it again – even after this experience, yes, I love the idea of cleaning up after the race, eating, crawling right in to bed, waking up, and going racing again. Race, Eat, Sleep, Repeat. This is every runner’s dream

Tail Dust Tails

The Cool Down Runner