Qu'est-ce que c'est? 12-Hour Invitational

October 16, 2004

Charleston, SC

By Alex Morton, RD

This year the Qu'est-ce que c'est? went invitational. All two runners who were invited chose to participate. The 5th running of this event held at Hampton Park was expanded to a 12-hour event to maximize the opportunity to run in one of the best running venues in Charleston. We started at 6:00 AM with a temperature near 49 degrees, which rose to about 74 degrees with sunny skies and a light breeze. Andrea Stewart, Robert Crosby and Alex Morton ran loops of 1.03 miles most of the day with the course going through the park?s gazebo, where we occasional encountered interesting activities, such as weddings and wedding rehearsals.

We were happily distracted by friends who occasionally dropped by to run a few laps or to see if such a 12-hour event truly existed. We were also entertained by the annual SPCA dog festival, which was being help in another area of the park. We got to see just about every kind of dog imaginable (conservative estimates place the number of dogs in the park at 500.) Robert decided to stop after a 50 k distance, a reasonable decision seeing how he had just run the Arkansas 100 miler just 2 weeks ago! As Andrea and I continued to loop the park, after about 11 hours we decided we had seen enough dogs as each new sighting caused a near visceral reaction.

Challenges came in the form of being faced with the aid station every mile: ?Should we stop and eat and drink or run past?? Usually, we aren?t faced with unlimited aid, however stopping every mile can distract as well as add an extra minute to each lap.  One distraction both Andrea and I looked forward to was marking our lap on a display board after each loop. We were artistically challenged to come up with a new design for each lap to replace the traditional ?check mark.? (We are obviously easily entertained!)

This run was going up against the "best trail race in the east", a mostrighteous event being held in the north. However , we don?t think we pulled to many runners away from that event, as we didn?t offer any running trinkets. The Qu'est-ce que c'est? was sponsored by yourself, so you got what you brought to the run! Watch for your invitation next year.

Results for 12 hours of running looked like this:

Andrea Stewart            41            Columbia, SC                           57 miles

Alex Morton                 55            Mount Pleasant, SC                 56 miles

Robert Crosby,             46            Summerville, SC                      31.1 miles