We stopped off to wash our faces and brush our teeth along the way back to our tent, and then got dressed and packed up to head out onto the trail. We left camp at about 7:10, but the route had opened at 6:15, so we knew there were a lot of people who were way ahead of us! We walked right along the bay all morning, passing lots of beach front complexes and homes that were very nice (and passing lots of other walkers as well!). The weather was beautiful this day--a little warmer than day one and very sunny. Since it was such a gorgeous Saturday morning, the boardwalk along the beach was just packed with other bikers, walkers and joggers. We passed at least a couple of marinas as well as a couple of parks with pit stops, and all along the way there were amazing numbers of supporters, many of whom were the same people we'd seen cheering us on the previous day! I was so amazed that these dedicated people were giving up their entire weekend just to come out and clap, cheer and pass out treats--and pass out treats they did!! At some point before the walk started on day one, one of the returning walkers welcomed everyone to the "60 mile San Diego Buffet." I couldn't figure out what that meant at the time, but we realized very quickly that it was a reference to all of the walker stalkers, who were passing out huge amounts of candy around every corner! There would be entire Girl Scout troops and cheerleading squads with bowls full of chocolate and buckets of red vines, and you felt terrible refusing because you were so appreciative of them just being there! We were sick from too much candy by 9 in the morning!
We arrived at a section of Mission Bay Park on the south side of the bay for "lunch", which was just over 9.5 miles into the day. Even though it was before 9:30 a.m., we enjoyed a chicken
wrap, a few chips and a fruit cup just so we wouldn't have to haul the food around with us to eat later. It was such a nice day and the park was so beautiful, it might have been nice to lounge around there all afternoon! The crew had decorated the area like a 50s diner, with oldies music playing and crew members in poodle skirts. It was really quite entertaining, but we only rested and stretched about a half hour before heading back out onto the route. We soon passed a dog park called "Dog Beach" on the northern end of Ocean Beach, and of course Vikkie and I both loved watching all the dogs romp and play in the sand and surf!It was soon after this that the battery on my Garmin Forerunner went dead, which is unfortunate because I really had no idea where we were walking without looking at a map! I do know that we walked south for a little while longer before walking through a bunch of residential areas that had a ton of hills! These hills were killer--they were steep and there were lots of them! This was probably the only time during the 3 days of walking that we really got our heart rates up and worked up a sweat. We hauled up and down several hills before heading back north towards the Mission Bay area, where we walked past Sea World and around the park some more before heading back to our campsite, which was at Crown Point Shores in Mission Bay Park. We arrived about 1:30 p.m. and were the 112th/113th people to finish the 21.1 miles that day. While it might sound like we were slower than the day before because we came in behind more people, we actually felt better about our finish because we didn't have a single person pass us the entire day! All of those people finishing in front of us either started before us or took one of the "sweep" vans (vans that pick up injured/tired/wimpy walkers to transport them to the next pit stop or checkpoint) to get there!
In all seriousness, I was really surprised at how many people were eager to get on a sweep van and then weren't embarrassed at all about having done so. As Vikkie and I often discussed, after training for so many weeks we a) didn't ever feel the need to be rescued by a sweep van and b) wouldn't have been caught dead doing so because of our competitive natures. I mean how could we raise all that money based on the condition that we were going to walk 60 miles and then not actually walk 60 miles? It seems like false advertising, if you ask me. Call me callous, but I had a hard time feeling sorry for people who "couldn't" finish walking because of blisters. Vikkie and I made a lot of weekend sacrifices in order to put in hours and hours of training, and people who ended up with "hamburger feet" clearly didn't. That was their choice, so I have a hard time having any sympathy for them! That probably sounds cruel, but I'm just being honest!
So back to the review of our day, now that I've gotten off my soap box. :) After finishing on day 2 we did the same things we did the day before: foot massage, snacks, stretching, etc., and then we headed off to take showers, since our friend Tish (who used to work at KU Endowment before moving to LA), was going to come down to San Diego in the late afternoon to come hang out with us and go watch the KU/OSU football game! We skipped the dinner at camp since we planned to eat with Tish, who ended up getting to SD a lot later than expected, and then getting lost because we weren't able to give her good directions since we didn't really know exactly where we were! Finally, with the help of a creepy cab guy who talked Tish through getting there on the phone, she arrived at about 6 or so. Since the game had started just after 5, we were getting text message updates from Chad since we were missing the action!
Thankfully I had printed off directions at home to the local place which is famous for playing all the KU games, Kansas City Barbeque. They were listed on the KUAA website as the place to go for a watch party, but when we got there and glanced around the tiny restaurant the game wasn't eve
n on! We asked the staff where the game was, only to receive some vague answer about them not being able to get it! ACK!!!! They suggested we walk down the street to a restaurant in a nearby hotel that was supposed to be able to get every game, which we did, only to sit around and wait forever for their staff to try to get the game on. What we eventually discovered was that somehow our game wasn't being shown in their area, even on satellite, because of some huge area rivalry that was superseding KU. We ate dinner and watched other Big 12 games, which provided us with updates of our own game to supplement the text messages Chad was sending us. Thankfully, our Jayhawks were victorious even though we didn't get to watch a single down!We arrived back at camp right before 9:00, and since "lights out" was at 9 we made it back to our tent just in time for changing clothes, brushing teeth and crawling into out sleeping bags! Somehow, we weren't even quite as exhausted as we had been after day 1!
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