Saturday I checked off my 46th state. Not conquered, simply completed, as the last frontier provided quite the challenge for me.

I left on Thursday as it’s a long way to go to get to Alaska. The flight plan was Tulsa to DFW, to Seattle, to Anchorage. I made it to DFW and was wandering around the terminal when I saw a flight leaving for Anchorage in 42 minutes. On a whim, I went to customer service to see if I could get on standby, and lucked out with an actual seat assignment. It was a very long flight but saved me almost 4 hours in travel time. So that’s a win!

When I arrived in Anchorage it was still daylight. In fact it was daylight until 11:42pm. I got to my hotel and crashed – sleep was more important than dinner. Travel always wears me out and the time change was tough as well.

I awoke the next morning around 3am AKC time…and the sun wasn’t long behind me. Sunrise was at 4:20am. I decided to go search for breakfast, but had to wait for everything to open, so I decided to walk around and explore Anchorage. I walked/hiked through some trails, trying to see wildlife. My big goal for the trip, other than finishing the race, was to see a moose.

Once breakfast time arrived I went to a place called Snow City Cafe in the downtown area. It was well reviewed on yelp so I decided to give it a try. Unfortunately I had to wait almost 2 hours, but finally got a meal around 11:30am. If you ever end up in Anchorage, highly recommend being smarter than me and checking in online before arrival. The food was good though, I had a crab omelet.

From there I set off to the race expo which was in the Alaska Airlines center. It was fairly small, but nice. They had printed all of our names on a wall.

They also had a chip check and the group right after me had a team name that made me laugh…

After the expo I continued to wander around Anchorage. Went to a few parks (so many beautiful ones!), the University of Alaska – Anchorage, and the mall. Dinner was at a place called Moose’s Tooth for pizza and some beer.

I then headed back to the hotel, with 15.5 miles of exploring under my belt. I will say – I had to be cautious walking around by myself. If you ever travel there, just be mindful of your surroundings. There were a couple of times I crossed the street to get away from situations that made me uncomfortable.

I set my alarm for the next morning- but didn’t need it. Was up super early still fighting the time difference. Got an uber to the start line and saw my first moose dart out in front of the uber! He was too quick for me to get a photo, but super cool.

It started raining before we began – which was a bummer since the forecast had a 0% chance of rain, so I wasn’t prepared, and it was a bit chilly.

The start was super congested, the race was mostly on a trail path and we could only fit about 3 people across. My first mile is usually my fastest but this time I just couldn’t get past the group. That didn’t bother me much though as my goal for this race was just to see a moose.

The first half went alright and then I finally saw it- a moose! It was hard to get a good picture of her, for some reason she didn’t come when I called, and it looked like she had two babies with her. I was so pumped!

After that, I sort of fell apart physically. My legs were cramping and then I started to feel nauseous. I’m not sure really what went wrong, but I felt awful. I tried to just focus on the scenery and did find this pretty cool creation:

It ended up taking me almost an hour to finish the last 5k and my time was 3 hours 3 minutes- when just a few weeks prior I ran 2 hours 9 minutes. It’s hard on the ego when you don’t perform up to your standards and it definitely made me question why I think extreme endurance running is such a fun hobby.

Once I crossed the finish line I got the teeny tiny biodegradable cup of water they gave us, sat down on the ground, felt sorry for myself for a few minutes, then got my ass up and called an uber. I went back to the hotel, got a shower and a nap, and when I woke up, was feeling better.

The day ended up on a high note though. I went to dinner with some friends that had just moved from Houston to Anchorage (hi Tran’s!).

Sunday morning, I once again woke up at the butt crack of dawn, and headed to the airport.

I’m still trying to get home as I type this. Should arrive home at about 2am on Monday morning.

I’m tired but always enjoy the people watching when traveling. At work we often joke that reading is hard, and it’s evidenced in here as well, even when pictures are provided.

So while I didn’t have the best race, Alaska was beautiful and another state is done. Four more to go before this 9 year journey comes to an end.

Next up: New Hampshire.