Stuff

This week has been busy for me. I was due for an easy training week and I don't know when I would have found the time to do a lot of miles anyway. I did three 10 mile runs this week and that was all. Next week will be better.

I've been working on Badwater business. Nathan (my brother) and I got our reservations made for hotels, flights and rental car for our long weekend in Death Valley at the end of May.

Here's the itinerary: we're meeting in Las Vegas on Thursday morning, he'll pick up the rental car at the airport and my flight arrives about an hour after his, then we'll have to hit a Wal Mart (ADA donation oportunity) or Target and get some kind of a cheap cooler and all our supplies for my two days of running. We'll head to Furnace Creek and on Friday I'll run from Badwater to Stovepipe Wells, stay in Stovepipe Wells that night, and Saturday morning I'll run over Townes Pass to Panamint Springs. Then we'll drive the last 60+ miles of the course to Whitney Portal so I can review it in my head.

We'll drive back to Stovepipe Wells again Saturday night and return to Vegas in the morning on Sunday. I will fly back to Denver and Nathan will stay in Las Vegas for the afternoon for a cadaver conference.

Yes you read that right.

I don't have any more details, I'll let you know when I can find out more from him.

The down side to taking big chunks of time off work right now is that I have to squeeze my work days in tight, which gives me little time off in between shifts. I only had today off and I ran 10 miles at Horsetooth, still feeling slow from last week's effort. Afterwards I did 56 minutes in the sauna, my longest session yet. I was going to try for an hour but I was starting to feel claustrophobic and I checked my heart rate and it was in the 140s. Good enough.

My arms were peeling bad this week, I had to wear long sleeves at work because it looked like I had a disease. They itch!

I spent the rest of this afternoon working on my display for the Colorado Marathon expo next Saturday at the Hilton. I'll be there to spead the word about my fundraising effort at Badwater for the Foundation.

This week I was contacted by the local paper, they want to do a piece about running Badwater and I hope they'll focus on the fundraising aspect of it.

Saturday the 17th Dennis and I are invited to a fundraising event for the Foundation and we have to get dressed up for it! I have a black dress that I wore at my sister's wedding seven years ago. I had to dig it out, dust it off, and get it dry cleaned. I put it on and I have no idea what happened to my body since 2001 but my hips are a lot wider than they used to be! My weight hasn't changed, but something is different. I'm afraid to move too much in it. At work yesterday we were talking about solutions to the middle age "too tight dress phenomenon". I'm working on it.

The other stuff that's happening is I am having some crew fluctuations and uncertainty. Felix let me know a few weeks ago that he was concerned about finishing his bike race in time to make it to Badwater to pace me. He's doing a mountain bike ride on the Continental Divide and it's something like 1500 miles. The closer he gets to the race the more he feels uncertain about cutting himself too little time at the end. I'd love to have Felix there but I hate for him to have that on his mind while he's racing. He suggested a good alternate crewperson and I'm waiting to hear from him about whether he can commit.

Nathan won't be able to crew at the race because of another family commitment that overlaps, but his help crewing my training run on the race course at the end of May is going to be awesome.

As of this moment I am looking for two crew members who can also pace. I was describing my crewing needs to someone recently like this: I'm looking for two people with their heads screwed on straight who want to crew and pace at Badwater.

Then I realized that was an oxymoron.

I'm running the Colorado Marathon next Sunday and will try to get some good miles in throughout the week. Saturday I'll be at the Expo all day which will force me to rest before the marathon. I have to get up at 3:30 am Sunday to catch the bus up Poudre Canyon. I have a busy week at work ahead too.

It snowed in town yesterday, and this morning it was 28 degrees on my run. Will we ever have summer? Starting in May I plan to hit the sauna four days a week. I looked at my calendar and there are only 8 more weeks of training before I start to taper!