It was a fun day yesterday, I think, but not an easy one. I did 12:01:55 which is three hours slower than my goal. Had to slow up a bunch to deal with heat sickness and to pace my water consumption. The weatherman was full of crap-- instead of the forecasted 81°F, it was 96°F for many hours of the day. Probably good heat training for fall races though. I chose the turnaround to be the first bench I could sit down on at the Saratoga Gap parking lot. The campers at Waterman Gap thought I was nuts when I frantically bombed to the spigot after an hour without water, proceeded to get stung by a bee, and danced around the spigot cursing. Also funny for the Silicon Valley day trippers at Big Basin Park HQ to see me on the return, when I bought 6 freeze pops, stuck two under my armpits, and laid facedown in the creek to get my core temp down so that I could eat/drink again.
So, I guess it ended up being "quasi-self-supported" because I bought the stuff at the HQ store. Not sure how that blurs the rules of self-supported-ness. But damn it, the freeze pops were beyond delicious! And got me back to a reasonable pace. No regrets!
I'll try again sometime when cooler weather is guaranteed. I really want to go sub 10hrs at least. I know some, noted by Loer's lightning fast time above, could go into the 8s or better for a round trip.