50 at 60

The race is coming up quickly, and the snow is coming down faster.  March 2^nd is the race in Urique, with temperatures of high 80’s and mid 90’s, if past year’s weather is a good predictor.  We are packing bags, no need to worry about wearing shorts and short-sleeved shirts here, last week the thermometer said -22 and some days it didn’t make it about zero. It doesn’t sound like we will need our Stiegers and long johns there…

Gary turns 60 on March 7^th, just a few days after the race.  When he began to talk about the race, when it was still just a pipedream, he would laugh and say ‘wouldn’t it be something to run 50 miles when I turn 60?’  Slowly that crazy idea has manifested itself into much more than just a passing thought.  A book, a chance meeting with an old friend-now a running coach, support and encouragement from friends have all woven a foundation under the dream.

As to be expected the snow has put a damper on Gary’s training.  ‘It is what it is’, Bob the coach says ‘we just have to go with the idea that we have been training up to this point’.  This weekend brought at least another two feet of snow although the wind was a constant 30-40 mph so it was hard to measure.  The road is drifted closed again with a number of vehicles, trucks and snowmachines alike, stuck and abandoned like toys of a naughty child.  There are no tracks for Gary to run in.  The snow is deep enough that we cannot leave the horses here to be fed by a neighbor, they need to be somewhere with access to water.  I am becoming a little panicked by the idea of going to a country where our grasp of the language is paltry at best and Gary running in weather a hundred degrees warmer that we have been dealing with the last week.

And Gary?  He is the optimistic one now. He’s out today on snowshoes, as close to training as he is going to get today.  50 at 60…

Note the fence in this photo taken a couple of weeks ago versus the fence, or lack of one in the photo today (above).