Go West

Have you ever seen the movie "Rat Race"? It's a comedy in which John Cleese plays an eccentric Vegas millionaire who gets a group of goofy characters to race to New Mexico for $2 million in prize money just so he and his cronies can bet on the outcome. Well last night I had the most bizarre dream - I turned up for the Cactus Rose race, and all the other runners were characters from that movie....and they were all faster than me. At one point I was chasing Rowan Atkinson up Ice Cream hill.

As bizarre dreams go, running an ultra with Mr Bean takes some beating!!!

Back in reality we're heading out to West Texas tomorrow morning - I'm running the M2M marathon in Alpine on Saturday so we decided to make a mini-vacation out of it. The forecast calls for highs in the low 70s and lows in the upper 40s - perfect running weather. This is the first of two marathons I'll be running in the build up to Cactus Rose at the end of the month, the first I've run since our trip to Seabrook back in March and my first at altitude (4600ft). I've never been to West Texas before and I'm really looking forward to the trip - should be fun.

As for the race, I plan on treating it like a training run. But I know you've all heard me say that before :-)

Yesterday evening I did my last hard run before the race - 20 road hill repeats - and I really hammered them. The temperature was in the low 90s, humidity was up, and I finished the workout exhausted, dripping with sweat and glowing. You know those times where you push it and it really feels good? Well this was one of them.

I was also dripping after this morning's run - the air was so thick and muggy you could cut it with a bread knife. Where oh where did our cool weather go? At one point I almost wondered if I'd wandered into the shower in my running gear and just forgotten about it.

And finally, here's a funny story that I know my trail buddies will appreciate. The other day two of my slower road friends asked me if I'd ever run any of "those ultramarathons", and when I said I had they asked me if I'd ever run 100 miles. I could see where this was going, and sure enough the next question was what pace I'd run. I replied it was about a 12:30 average.

Considering my road pace is usually somewhere in the 7s, this came as a bit of a surprise to them. One of them looked me up and down and said "well that's not very fast, I could do that".

I just smiled.