Inaugural Blog

It is less than two weeks until the St Louis Marathon. I have not really been training for it much. I will admit that since the weather started getting a little nicer I have been running more but outside of the "Frost Bite Series" I really didn't run over the winter. Next year all of that is going to change because of the goals I have set for myself.
Most people think I am crazy for wanting to run 100+ miles, but to me it seems crazy that people don't want to. Therein lies the dilemma I don't know if it is me or everyone else. A crazy person should not be aware of his own psychosis, right? So if in fact I were crazy I would be unaware of that fact, and given my current state it is entirely possible that I am officially "Tom Cruise" Crazy. But I digress.
A couple years ago I was watching laying around on a Saturday or Sunday watching tv, and I happened to stop on a show about "Badwater". I think Scott Jurek won in under 24 hours. He was running covered from head to toe in white to ward off the heat. The announcer said that the runners try to stay on the white lines painted on the side of the road because otherwise their shoes would melt. I never knew races like this existed. I was enthralled. I said to myself, "I must do this." Not necessarily Badwater, but I must run 100 miles.
Running is nothing knew for me, I was in the army for eight years. We ran about four miles every day, and while I was in the army I ran in several 5k, and 10k races. However the farthest I had ever ran back then was 13k. I remember, and it is funny to have such a vivid memory of something so opposite of where I am now, when I was in Germany a group of people from the unit decided that they were going to go to Berlin and run the Berlin half marathon, I can remember thinking that they must've had a few screws loose to want to run 13.1 miles. Now I look back and kick myself for not seizing probably the only chance I will get to put the Berlin Half on my resume.
On May 17th I will be running my very first Ultra marathon the Berryman 50mile trail run. I am super excited about it, and I cannot wait for it to get here so that I may properly begin my journey into Ultra running. I hope to finish in the neighborhood of 10 hours, which is probably not a reasonable time given my current level of preparedness. I plan to give it everything I have.
It seems like this area is going through a Golden Age of sorts or at the very least a Renaissance of Ultra Running, so I think now is the time to get involved in this sport. There are so many more resources available now than when I first started researching this sport. Without these resources I wouldn't know about little things like losing toe nails, salt pills, and eating while running. So thanks to everyone who ever gave me advice or posted a valuable lesson on a message board so that others would not have to learn the hard way.
That is all I have time for today, since I have to go to work.
NAMASTE...