I’m back in California after a week at home in North Carolina. My husband and I were there to help with a 100-mile race that runs along the trails of beautiful Umstead State Park.

My husband is the captain in charge of the remote aid station on the course—one of two aid stations and the only one without electricity and running water. I help out as needed and also take photographs. Saturday’s weather presented challenges, though, and rain kept me under the aid station tent for longer than I had hoped.

The creek may have been happy about all the rain, but the runners got tired of it pretty quickly.

An aid station is a thing of wonder during an ultramarathon, a hive where the full range of emotions can be on display at any given time.

This is probably the most exhausting weekend my husband and I experience each year, but it’s also an amazing testament to the indomitable human spirit (and bodies, too). It has become an annual family reunion of sorts for us, and we look forward to hugging old friends and making new ones with each year’s race.

Though our bodies are crying out for sleep, our minds are busy processing this year’s race and already swirling ahead to what we’ll keep the same and what we’ll do differently at next year’s race.

Because this is the first day back at my computer, it’s my first chance to sit down and do something useful with the 1600+ photographs I took Saturday. I feel like I have miles to go before I sleep, a different sort of miles than the runners faced, but still, a task ahead of me before I can rest.

… and miles to go before I sleep

I hope you won’t mind if today’s post is shorter than usual. I want to get the photos to the runners as quickly as possible to celebrate their accomplishment, to help them remember fleeting moments of the long race, to honor them for their inspirational efforts.

How about you? What tasks do you have that mean miles to go before you sleep? Are you doing them out of love or necessity (or both)?