I made it back from the holidays . . . just barely . . . but I brought a wicked sinus infection with me. The timing is attrocious since this should be my final few weeks of good training before the Patagonia race, but instead I'm going to doctors and feeling rotten and jet-lagged. My base fitness is fine and I'm not too worried about it, but it does further undermine my well-being. I'm a bit like a dog: just give me plenty of food and exercise and I'm a happy boy . . . but being unable to exercise just compounds the sense of illness. I have no qualms about training through a cold (
following rough guidelines outlined here in Runners World) but I've got something a bit more vicious.
I hope I'm feeling better in a couple days because Scott "Flash" Pleban is landing in Zurich to tackle the
Championships in Ski Orienteering starting this weekend. I don't know if Jill and I will head down there to cheer Scott on, we'll have to see how the weather, work, and health all come together. It's in a pretty part of Switzerland, though!
I've been responding to a steady stream of email inquiries about the
Untamed New England race and
Untamed Revolution, too. Things like how much elevation gain we're looking at in New England (around 30,000 feet or 500 ft per hour on average -- not an absurd figure, but certainly the highest for any race we've planned) . . . registration questions (we now have mail-in payment information on the website), speculation about how close to Manchester the race HQ will be (I'm not telling), and so on. It's going to be a fun and adventurous 2008, that's for sure!
While registration started slow for
New England, I'm getting a sense that with the January cost increase and people getting serious about their 2008 calendars, we'll see the registration activity pick up and -- who knows -- we may sell that race out after all. It's always a challenge to budget for a race when you aren't sure of the turn-out. When you're not sure how many participants you'll have, pricing decisions become tougher and arranging for infrastructure is more of a challenge. The Northeast is new territory for us, and a 60-hour race isn't something appealing to just anyone, so we've had to work hard to build some name recognition up there. There's been a great group of people circulating our race propaganda around the region (and if you want more
just ask me!), and folks like the
GMARA are helping the cause.
We've been spoiled in the last several years by the loyal mid-Atlantic following . . . if we cap a race at 50 teams, for example, we can be certain we'll hit the cap. Hopefully our rep is still strong for
Untamed Virginia in 2008 and we get a great turn-out. The exact VA course is still in development but we know enough to open registration for that later this month; truthfully, I just have to make the time to update the website and get the registration rolling over at
RaceIt.
Let's see . . . in news regarding some of the other Untamed Adventure staff . . .
Marshall Ulrich is down in Arizona training for his trans continental run. That's a lot of running. He's also got a Kilimanjaro safari cooked up for June 2008 and there's room for you to join!
Eric Cone is up to his eyeballs in RaceIt software for event management (and my working arrangement with RaceIt will continue into 2008); there's so much opportunity for this platform, it's really exciting.
Jill is wishing we could include cross country skiing in Untamed New England, since she'd be able to finally log a faster split time on a leg than me. I think she'll have to make due with kicking my butt here in Switzerland this Winter, instead.
Hope your 2008 is off to a healthier start than mine!