State of Delirium

I am so delirious writing this right now that I'm not even sure this is going to even come out right. We were super busy at the ambulance yesterday for my 24, so I ended up only getting about 45 minutes of sleep. I started out the day with a 4am wake-up and got a 5-mile run in on the treadmill. That's about all I have to time to fit in because it takes me almost 20 minutes to get myself up and dressed and to find the nerve to go down into the freezing basement where the treadmill is. Got it done, though. My ambulance shift started out slow 7am. One 911 call in the morning, but by afternoon, we were headed to Portland, Maine with a patient when I got the call we were transporting to another patient to Boston as soon as we got back to North Conway. I don't complain. I love the job, and transfers are part of it, but this transfer went out just as the snowstorm hit us. It was a tense ride all the way down to Boston. I was white-knuckling it the whole way. The roads were just white and the snow started coming down pretty hard. I got us all there in one piece, dropped the patient and then started the LONG drive home. The snow was heavy and I-95 and Rt 16 were completely unplowed the entire drive home. By 2am, I had to stop in Rochester to have my partner drive the rest of the way. I had been staring at nothing but a white road and white stuff falling for 5 hours, and my eyes had had enough. It was 35-40 mph the whole way back on Rt 16. We were literally driving through thick piles of snow. I've driven in conditions like that before, but never for so long. It was pretty tiring. We finally made it back to the ambulance base by 3:30am. I went right in the house and into my sleeping bag; I was out in about 15 minutes once the other crew left and the house got quiet. It was short-lived, though, as 45 minutes later a 911 call came in. It was a pretty ridiculous call, but we got it done quickly and got back to the base by 5:30am. At this point, I knew sleep wasn't happening, so I wrote my report and washed our truck for the replacement crew. It was SO dirty from the two transfers. Then I walked over to the crew quarters to shovel our walkway, porch and steps. Sat down with a cup of coffee and waited for the next crew to come in.
I was wide awake at this point on some weird, lack of sleep energy, so I knew I had to get my run in asap before I crashed. Today just happened to the ONE and ONLY day I could get a long run in. I had planned to hit some regular roads I had never run before, but with the snow storm, I knew I would need to stay off of those roads. The shoulders weren't clear, and huge DOT plows were out and about. So, as usual, I headed down to Chocorua Lake to run the roads there again. The weather was absolutely beautiful, and the roads had already been perfectly plowed. I was feeling the fatigue, but I was not about to give up my chance at a long run, so I just went with it. A pretty boring run as I went out-and-back twice, but I got in 20.5 miles just slogging away. I know my time suffered from the fatigue, but it really wasn't that bad at a 7:50/mi pace and over 1600 ft of elevation gain, so I'll take it.
I was dead to the world after this, but I managed to come home, shower and then snowblow the driveway. John came home, and we hung out for a bit (well, me lying on the couch) until it was time to head up to Tin Mountain Conservation Center for Family Fun Night. Well, it wasn't super fun. The wind had started blowing pretty hard, so we only snowshoed a bit, did a project on the pond and then headed back to the building. At that point, we just waited for the pizza to arrive and then blew that joint so that John could go to his aerial class at the gymnastics center. By the end of his class, I was leaning on the half wall with my head on my arms and my eyes closed.
Tomorrow is going to be a rest day. Not just to rest my legs, but to rest my body and catch up on sleep. If I do any running, it will just be up Heavenly Hill once to exercise the dogs, but I'm not even sure I'll make it that far.

2am. Stopped in Rochester, NH after hour 5 of driving in a snowstorm. I wasn't a happy camper.