Finally the last leg, I can only imagine how these guys felt. We were marking the minutes until we saw the sun again and praying it would bring warmth with it. I pushed a little hard on this stretch with some long slow downhills. They guys managed to keep up and we were just moving on down the road. We had to look quite a sight. We saw Debbie several times on the stretch out of Kelleyville #2 and finally I just sat for a min on her tailgate. It felt good to sit. I could not indulge too long though as the fellas kept moving, afraid if they stoped at the car they just might get in. So I headed back out to catch the guys. I caught up quickly and we jogged as long as we could until we just could not move our legs in that fashion any more and had to quit for a min. At this point everyone was hurting, our feet, legs and akles were beat to hell and my knees felt like there was a guy beating them with a hammer.
Finally, Bill and I a little lacking in sleep started singing The Beatles "Here comes the Sun" and miraculously as if on queue the sun began to rise. Everyone got a bit more energy (Had absolutely nothing to do with the singing believe me.). Little did we know the sun would bring with it endless stretches of highway. At this point we had not seen Otis in about 4 hours and suddenly we remembered Stan had a cell phone. We quickly called and left a voicemail. Then again, another voicemail. But never fear Otis would respond, not by calling back, but by tearing ass down the highway doing a 180 in the middle of the road and trying to eliminate us all from the race via vehicular manslaughter. What really amazes me looking back on it is that we were so tired no one even flinched.
Perfect timing actually on the part of Otis, it was warming up and we were all shedding gear like crazy. Bill ordered a hamburger and the jetta wheeled around and tore off down the road to go get it. Turns out Otis had a bit of a run in with Taco Mayo. We saw him at the next aid station in Sapulpa, but that was okay because everyone's spirits were lifted at this point. This was it, the last stretch 7 miles to go or was it 8, no one seemed to know not even the aid station personnel. Oh well, we made it this far what did it matter. Bill said, "Lets run as much of this stretch as we can" and ran we did, all of the downhills until we hit Frankoma road, the last or so we thought turn. Where we turned onto Frankoma road it turns out is about 8 miles from the finish. I will say this about this last piece of asphalt, it was the longest 8 mile road in the history of 8 mile roads. We were told stay on this road until you see 49th st, then turn right and go another 200 yards and you are home free.
The problem though was the numbering on the street signs, when we started out, we were at 79th and as we went along we happily saw the signs go down to 69th, then in the true fashion of murphy's law, they jumped back up to 89th. Welcome to the twilight zone gentlemen. It seemed to go on forever this tiny little stretch of 8 mile road. Then suddenly we saw it, Frankoma pottery, the finish line, only trouble is that was the original finish line. The new finish was actually at a Carl's Jr. restaurant about 2 miles down the road, or so we thought at the time, so with a loud exhale we began jogging again.
Now we finally saw Otis again on this last stretch, in fact, we saw Otis many times over the last little bit. He was kindly informing us we still had 5 miles to go. When he kept telling us how far we had, we chalked the distance seeming too long, up to Otis math and kept going. Then, to our dismay, Otis showed up with a credible witness, he had Dave in the car. Dave finished in 23 hours and change and told us we still had 4 and a half miles to go.
I believe what everyone was thinking was thinking silently or perhaps out loud at this point was well, I think I may have to sensor it to keep things family friendly, lets just chalk it up to a profane form of unbelievable!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We kept moving for what seemed like hours and Bill and I were starting to get irritated that this damn finish line seemed to be a moving target. We saw Otis and Dave again and Otis flashed up three fingers indicating the mileage. Bill and I were now, tired, irritated and ready to be done. Bill exclaimed well, maybe Otis is off by a bit. Then we saw Allan's crew car his wife said "The next time you see me, you will be done." Everyone grew excited, we thought we were basically there then I asked, "Great how much further?" "About 3 miles" was the response and she went on down the road. Bill and I just looked at each other, then Stan, then Allen.
"Bill", I said "what do you have left", the response "Lets get off this Mother (Expletive Removed) road." We picked it up and ran almost all of the last 3 miles at about a 9.5 - 10 min/ mile pace. Passing more people in the last 3 miles that we did all night. We pulled into the finish, I looked back and noticed we dropped Allen, Stan looked pale as a ghost and I swore he was going to hurl and I just wanted to lay down and sleep.
The guys PRd the thing in under 27 hours Allan came in just a few minutes later, he finished his first hundred. It was a really awesome night and, thinking back on the details of the pain, it was all worth it in the end.
Now I know I spent a lot of time in this post digging on OTIS. But in all seriousness, Otis, was there when we absolutely needed him and provided hours of untold entertainment, not to mention the Guiness at the finish.
Otis, we could not have finished wihout you and I can't imagine a better or more dedicated crew chief. From the bottom of my heart, Thank You!!
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