What have you done to me?

I don't know how long it takes runners to recover from WHW race weekend - judging how quickly some of you were out on "recovery" runs, not bleeding long, it seems!  I fear I'm not so hardy....

Monday was mostly spent travelling back to Edinburgh (discovering just how loud the car stereo can go - very! - and making reckless remarks about things to be done later in the year), then unpacking and getting straight.  On Tuesday, my body finally caught up with me and insisted on me spending most of the day crashed out in the armchair, either dozing or blog writing (apologies, I think it took me longer to write about the race than it took Richie to run it....).  Wednesday was that horrible "back to work tomorrow" feeling and the real come-down from a brilliant weekend.

I knew that Jez Bragg was in the US for the Western States 100 miler but wasn't quite sure of the date until Murdo posted details of the live update websites on the WHW forum.  Hmm, I might have a quick peek at that on Saturday evening...

I peeked late afternoon when I got in from the Armed Forces Day parade.  And kept peeking ... all evening ... in between checking all the updates from my new facebook friends ... and discovering how to follow #WS100 on twitter ... and refreshing pages and suddenly it's midnight.  I can't see this race, it's happening thousands of miles away, I know of one person competing, and I'm completely hooked.  I've been up since 4.30am and my alarm is due to go off at the same time on Sunday morning and I can't tear myself away.  The best I can manage is to restrict myself to twitter and facebook on my ipod whilst I go and lie horizontally in bed, and still keep updating both.

What a contest!  The lead pack go off course, Jez leads, the incredible Kilian Jornet retakes the lead, Jez comes back, Kilian comes back, the defending champion pulls out, lead groups are running shoulder to shoulder for miles, through snow, though blazing sun ... the women's race is disrupted by a bear on the course (one Californian bear = how many Scottish midges?), for the first time a non-American wins the men's race, Jez places fourth and immediately puts a post on his blog saying thanks for all the support from the UK, a Scots woman (now resident in Canada) wins the women's ...

And by the time my alarm goes off, I've had no sleep for the second consecutive Saturday night.  Is this how it's going to be?  Is my fascination with ultras going to condemn me to only ever getting six nights sleep a week?  Have I been adopted into the family or kidnapped?

What have you done to me???