Triple Play

I often joke about the idea that I am running so many marathons that I don't have time to train. When you talk to a distance runner don't ask how many miles they run a day, rather ask them how many miles they run per week. A typical training schedule calls for 40-50miles per week at the end of the cycle. When people ask me how many miles per week lately my honest answer is 26.2 miles. My last marathon was Illinois in April so theoretically I had 6 weeks to actually train for June's trifecta. I ran 16 marathons in the last 365 days and my times kept getting slower. I was hoping to have time to rest and train enough to get back into the five hour range. My spring schedule is full. I teach full time, tutor high school and college students and. I coach the Junior High boys track team. Realistically resting is not possible, but I did manage to get a couple of long runs in.
Gary teases me about over planning the trips that I drag him on. But this time I didn't have any idea where we were staying. I bought the tickets to Hawaii and registered us for the races, but beyond that as of the end of school I had nothing.
May 31 was the last day of school, so the next day I made the arrangements for inter islands air travel. We called up Uncle David to see if we could stay with him Thursday night on the way to Nebraska. Then we left. Talk about a leap of faith. The smart phone and the navigation on the BMW would be our tools to make up the itinerary as we went.
The car was full of camp gear, clothes for all kinds of weather.
Uncle David spoiled us with Wisconsin hospitality and bratts. Uncle David and I enjoyed finishing off a bottle of wine and I woke up the next morning reminding myself to rehydrate for tomorrow's marathon. We had a nine hour drive to Nebraska to get to the packet pickup. The trip from Wausau west is getting very familiar to us and we made good time to where we needed to turn south to Cherry County, Nebraska. The expo was is a saddle shop in Valentine, Nebraska. The smells of leather boots triggered memories from my youth. Gary decided to volunteer to help during the race and the race director gave him his assignment. He would be in charge of aid station at mile nine. They gave him a tee-shirt and race packet. We asked about camping and got great directions to a campground on a reservoir and on a Friday night we were the only campers. I think everyone else checked the weather channel. It blew all night long, so I had maybe an hour of sleep and a wine hangover to start the triple trip.
I have to be honest, I was thinking that I was going to die. But Gary brought me to the start out in the middle of cow pastures. It was dark and we were the first people there. The only thing that made us think that it might be the start was a pair of portajohns on a trailer. We parked and I made sure that the pot worked. Soon other runners showed up and one fellow was carrying a shotgun. I wasn't sure what that was about. The sun came up and the wind picked up. We lined up and at 7:16 the kid with the gun said on your mark get set and BOOM. We took off. My plan was to stay hydrated as much as I could with Gatorade. My stomach was having a hard time digesting the grassfed Nebraska angus steak that Gary and I shared the night before. I was a little nervous about how much support for portajohns there would be as my tummy churned. The three mile aid station had a portajohn and about a mile up the road the portajohns from the start passed me:-) every pair of portajohns were on a trailer and pulled behind a truck. So they had a total of six portajohns and they leapfrog through the marathon. When the last runners pass the John they pull it to the lead runners aid station.
What a great system! With the anxiety about tummy issues solved I could relax and enjoy myself. The course was lovely, rolling pastures dotted with windmills. The road was trimmed with wildflowers and the cattle grazing in the fields would come over to check us out. One beautiful bull was bellowing to a rival bull in the next field so for fun I mooed seductively to him and he started galloping towards me. I looked away and picked up the pace. He got bored and jogged back over to face his rival. This race could be hot, but the weather that day was amazing. Breezy, some sun, ideal. Then the finish brought the best surprise, the finisher award is a spur with the race information engraved in it. They had a grill with angus burgers and I saw someone with a beer. "Donde estan Los cervesas?" I don't know why I asked in Spanish but the fellow who I asked cracked up and had his wife bring me a beer. He gave Gary one too. We met the financial advisor who was the sponsor of the portajohn parade. He was voted the best of show,...really... And I didn't even get to vote.

All Points West

One of the challenges of running this nation is to fit the races in a teacher's calendar, with a teacher's budget. Paul Misur is a good friend and fifty states runner who has added the goal of completing each marathon in less than four hours: 50<4. When we compared calendars he suggested that Gary and I could save money by driving west, running a couple of races then take advantage of cheap airline tickets to Hawaii. It seemed silly until I did my homework and found that there were two races on consecutive weekends the week before the Kona marathon. In 2013 the marathon calendars listed Sandhills, Nebraska and Estes Park, Colorado on the first two weekends in June. The first of the three marathons to open
their registration was Kona, so I registered early. Then. January 14, I received an email that Sandhills was opening. I couldn't get a confirmation on my phone and decided to wait until the next morning to register at the computer at work. I get to my classroom by 7:30am and logged on to the website and the race had filled in ten hours!! Argh!! Panic and desperation set in. I am not the kind of runner that bothers race directors, but I posted a tweet and an email begging to be able to register. Andrew, the race director was very nice and allowed me a second chance. Phew, now all I had to do was arrange air travel and wait for the Estes Park to open. By the end of February the calendars that I was watching changed the date of the Estes Park Marathon to June 21! Again, panic! I couldn't be in Kona on Sunday and Colorado on Saturday. No problem, Colorado has so many marathons that plan B would be easy to figure out. I pulled down calendars for Colorado marathons from every online source that I could find. I posted a plea on the Marathon Maniacs website for a Colorado race on June 14. I need to be entirely honest, there is a race in Colorado on June 14: The Leadville Trail Marathon. I love running trail marathons, but realize that they can be tough. This one has three huge elevation gains. It's elevation chart goes from 10,500 to 12,500, back down to 10,500 then up to 13,500, back to 10,500, up to 12,500 then back down to 10,500. They had an 8:30 time limit so I thought I could make it happen. I registered and arranged airline travel from Denver to Hawaii.