Warped!

I'm feeling a little warped from trying to adjust to the EIOP. However, I continue to have no prospects for retiring to an Italian villa.

After reading the culmination of the Everest adventure, in which most everyone died, I'm less psyched than I was last Sunday to begin another week of Extreme Running. The attractions of mountaineering and marathoning had struck me as similar. But Thursday and Friday, I cheered myself on to running by considering the relative ease of an endeavor that requires no oxygen mask and no protection against hundred-below-zero gales.

I am signed up to run the National Marathon in Washington, DC, next Saturday. It will be my fourth running of the race (I ran it in 2008, 2009, and 2011), but my first since it became part of the Rock 'n' Roll series. I will get to check out a new course and experience my first Rock 'n' Roll marathon. I've never run a marathon in the series before, but in many races I've passed volunteers playing music from the sidelines. It makes a difference! I remember in particular when a satisfyingly bitter Alanis Morissette song quickened my step along a waterfront trail in Hartford, where I matched a PR I have never approached again.

In comparison to an Everest summit push, a marathon is a short adventure: that's what I will keep telling myself. If I keep a steady heart and mind, a few short hours will carry me to my goal.