Still Crazy

Well, I ran 35 miles on Sunday. No, I didn't have a good reason. I wasn't raising money for orphans or saving Timmy from a well, or even doing my small bit to reduce our use of fossil fuels. Nor was I being pursued by the Carmel, Indiana Fashion Police. Though, if you've ever seen me after I dressed myself to go running, you would know that's an ever-present danger.

I just had gotten the idea of running 35 miles in my mind, and then I couldn't come up with a good reason not to. (If you are a follower of me and Cory, you know that none of the following are considered a good reason: avoidance of pain, exercise of good judgment, demonstration of mental health, obeying a physician's orders.)

It went okay, with Cory joining me for the miles from 7 to 20. You see, he's been dealing with some sort of inflamed bursa in the knee and hasn't run for 3 weeks, so naturally his first day back running he chose to go 13 miles. (When either of us questions our own sanity, we can always point to the other and assure ourselves that "I'm not that crazy!")

But to continue, last week, I got the information about the major hills on the Comrades course to try to get a sense of what to expect. The measurements were in meters and kilometers, but I got out my conversion formulas and--voila!--I had the hills expressed as the increase of feet of altitude per mile. The hills were tough, but survivable, as long as we were slow and steady. Then I had an awakening! The numbers I had come up with were actually yards per mile. The hills were all THREE TIMES AS STEEP as I had calculated. At this point I put a bullet in my brain. Or I would have, except I once again was off by a factor of 3. My ceiling is very upset with me, I might add.

So where does that leave me? It leaves me knowing that this race is going to be less fun that "a 56-mile footrace in Africa" sounds like. Luckily, Cory is on the mend, and keeping up with him is a good motivator. Besides, I hear that Durbin, South Africa has some hard-nosed, relentless fashion police.