Well it is over. The marathon stage was today. Started off with our tent
blowing down at 4:30 am. I was lucky? to start 1.5 hours later in the top 200.
The first half went fast but the second half was slower. I made up about 800
meters in the dune fields by following my compass and not the crowd. Tenative
results put me 234th for the stage (lost of people running fast) and about 126th
overall. Time was around 5:10. Not too bad. Dirk ran a little faster at about
5:06 putting him overall just over the 300 mark! We have our medals and Dirk
kissed Patrick, thru his pack in the air and took his shirt off. His anticks got
him intervied by some French TV station. Looking forward to a short walk
tomorrow and your emails tonight!
Garth, congratulations bud. Very major achievement. I am inspired and working out. (I did about 7 miles and 1000 ft vertical on Monday, fast walking pace.) How do your legs feel? knees? when I did the Equinox Marathon in Fairbanks in 1982 my knees had some fluid, legs were sore, didn't walk much for one day, then all was fine. I am really amazed at how well Dirk did. what the heck over. How did he get in such good shape in flat country? Is is all the bicycle? A bike is kinda like jogging up hill all the time... but still, lots of different muscles in play when you are running/walking, shock loading, the descent muscles, and I don't think bicycling helps much with that. So his performance was a shocker to me. You... well you've been running a lot all this past decade or 11 years, maybe more, and you never really got out of shape your whole life. I'm on the come back trail, pushups and walking mostly, but I hammer up the hills, and I'm searching out steep hills, and roads to mountain tops. My job in Elko doesn't give me much time but now that the days are long I make time on Monday and Wednesday nites. On Thursday after work I drive 300 miles home. So far I'm averaging just 2 of these per week. But I'll try to get a third one in on fri or sat, but Fridays I'm pretty fatigued from the week, so its usually early to bed. Glad you made it, and good work using the compass, just like that first orienteering meet we did in... October, 1978, where the ROTC dude went off to who knows where, and you were right on the mark, using your head, map, and compass to save steps. Hope you got my notes through the MdS staff. -Brian
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