earthquakes and hurricanes, oh my!

earlier this week we had an earthquake and now we waiting to see whether or not a hurricane will hit us this weekend.  this is enough to leave one distracted and rather unproductive at work.  i find myself wanting instead to be helping prepare our home and our friends homes for anything that may come our way this weekend.

i reaching a certain concentration low, i decided that i needed to write down goals that i had for postdoc in the next two years.  this at least helped me re-gain my focus for a period and start delving into the medical literature to see what i could find out about how we control our gait.  it is amazing how much we learn not from studying healthy people but from studying people who have disordered movements.

my stomach was a little disordered last weekend.  i ended up struggling up hope pass again this year and missed the time cutoff at the 50-mile mark by 22 minutes.  this meant i had to stop running.  again, i don't think i'd had enough calories, but i had done a great well enough with my hydration.  i have been kind of bummed out this week, but i think that partially has to do with the fact that i'm recovering and not getting as much exercise as normal...so its probably withdrawal that's making me sad rather than the race itself.  i will finish eventually.

the plus side to this finish status, if you choose to look at it this way, was that eric and i found ourselves with a a free day in breckenridge that we had not been expecting.  we were able to go on a short hike in the mountains (that was all my recovering legs could take) and time to just enjoy being outside and in breck.  we are plotting ways to move there.  unfortunately, my camera seems to have been misplaced so i don't have pictures to share from the race or from breck.  hopefully i will find it soon!

from the mountains

we are in the mountains.  i love the profound stillness that exists here.  eric has quickly taken a liking to the mountains in colorado, much to my pleasure.

my race is on saturday.  i'm drinking water like there is no tomorrow and managing to stay somewhat hydrated.  we have to pick up a few things tomorrow and go to medical check-in in the morning (they measure our blood pressure, weight, oxygen saturation, etc, so they have a baseline for comparison if we need medical attention) followed by racer orientation.  after that i will commence making my ume musubis and finish the instructions for my crew and pacers.  the weather is perfect.

i am trying to embrace my nervousness.  i am getting lost in my own thoughts a lot staring at the mountains and visualizing the trails.  i am on familiar ground and excited yet scared that i will make mistakes like i did last time.  some of the cut off times have become more strict.  if i have a good day these won't be issues with this, but the reality of this race is that you don't know what you're going to have to deal with physiologically, environmentally, etc, until you start running on race morning.  that is part of what makes leadville such a great adventure though. 

i will try to post some pictures of the mountains here soon.