Lakewood's Wanderings and Scribbles.: Roadtripping, Finger Lakes, and a Looming Badwater

Thursday, June 28, 2012

Roadtripping, Finger Lakes, and a Looming Badwater

The Barkley Gate.....again...

Somehow in the past week I've managed to revisit the Barkley Course, straddle several state lines, sit in a sauna multiple times, play on trails in Houston, stand underneath the enormous New River gorge bridge, experience New Orleans (on a Saturday), and still get in some good runs. But more on all this in a sec.

Time is flying by and Badwater is ever looming. In just two days I will have my final "training" race for badwater up at the finger lakes fifties. This will be my third running and the temps are predicted to top 90 and humid...so perfect Badwater training indeed. I will be treating this race truly as an easy-going "fun-run" of sorts. My goal is to run steady, and finish. I need the miles and it is a great race with an awesome director and wonderful volunteers. Can't say enough great things about this race.

The sauna training has been going fairly well. I found a place local that let me buy a one-month membership that has both a dry sauna and steam room. I've upped my sitting times to 30 minutes now and hope to hit 40-45 early next week. As long as I keep getting in there on a regular basis, I think I'll be ok.

As far as an official Badwater update I can tell you this:

I have purchased or acquired all of my necessary light-colored clothing and other supplies needed for the race, including car magnets, blinking red lights, night-vests for crew etc. All that is left to buy are more gels and race day supplies like coolers and such. That stuff I will get in Vegas.

The race magazine is out now too: http://www.adventurecorps.com/downloads/bw/2012racemag.pdf

My support vehicle magnets!

So what's with the Barkley gate photo and all the craziness up above? I managed to squeeze in a very quick roadtrip south over a couple of days. I was able to knock out 5 new states bringing my total to 43 visited (45 if you count airports, which I don't). Along the way from Central Pennsylvania to Eastern Texas many a wondrous sight was seen! Here is a brief picture review of some of the highlights.