Ice, Ice, Baby

Well, Cory and I are in Colorado. After a stop in Hays, Kansas (temperature - 108 degrees; city motto: "We're So Nice, It's Spooky"), we arrived here on Tuesday, August 2nd, giving us 18 days to prepare for the race.

Our first full day here, we hiked up to the top of Hope Pass, which is the highest point on the race course, and ran down. We figure that will be one of the main challenges of the race and we wanted to establish a base line for how long it takes us to make the ascent and to make the descent. If things go well, after we've been here a while, we will get more adjusted to the altitude and the trails, but now we have what we hope is a worst case scenario--2:39 to ascend to Hope Pass on the outbound part of the race and 1:30 to descend the same stretch on the inbound part.

It also gave us a test of whether Cory's sleeping in a Michael Jackson bed (see below)

did anything beyond confirming that he is a disturbed and perverted individual.

It turns out that the bed did pay off. Or something did. Cory went up the trail like a mountain goat. And not just any mountain goat. Like a mountain goat being chased by Michael Jackson. (Okay, I'll stop the MJ jokes--for now.) It was very impressive, especially since we can still remember how much we were debilitated by the altitude when we first got here for the training camp in June.

There are still two weeks to go until the race, so we have ample opportunity to do something that sabotages all our training and preparation, but at this point it's hard to point to a reason that this plan of Cory's to do both the Comrades Marathon and the Leadville 100 can't be done.

I will say that I still worry about race temperatures. Even on our climb on Wednesday, with the sky overcast and the temperatures in the 50's and 60's there were times when I was uncomfortable.

Actually, I should say, I was still worried about race temperatures. But then as I was listening to the greatest song of all times, the answer came to me. Any time I'm feeling warm, I can dip my shirt, my arm sleeves and my bandanna in ice water. Let the musical genius Robert Van Winkle explain this strategy:

"Yo, VIP, Let's kick it--

"Ice, ice, baby; Ice, ice, baby

"All right, stop, collaborate, and listen; Ice is back like a brand new invention; When its cool grabs ahold of Jim tightly; He'll flow like a harpoon, daily and nightly [because it's a 30 hour race so part of it is during the day and part of it is during the night].

"Will he ever stop? yo, I don't know [actually, Jim will stop eventually, but it will seem like he's running forever to him while he's doing it]; Turn off the lights and he'll glow [because he'll be wearing a head lamp and carrying a flashlight, plus the trail will be marked with glow sticks--sort of like a rave without any of the fun].

"If there was a problem, yo, I'll solve it; Check out the hook while my DJ revolves it;

"Ice, ice, baby."

Now that I've got that going for me, I've got nothing to worry about. Well, except for fans of Michael Jackson catching up with me.