“We Few, We Happy Few, We Band of Runners – for he who shreds his feet, shall be called my bother!”

The long march was one of my strongest days, finishing 30^th overall in the stage, completing it in approximately 14 hours and 20 minutes.  Prior to the race start, I felt like the Apollo 13 space crew, trying to find every possible watt to slingshot me past the moon back to earth – except my watts was discarding any extra weight, including extra batteries, safety pins, starbucks instant coffee – etc, every gram makes a difference.  Remember when I mentioned that I unloaded the cheese on day 1? Well, I was speaking to an elite Italian runner before the start of stage 5 and asked what he eats?  He answered: “I always save parmagiane cheese for the long stage” – just my luck!

After finishing the long stage, around 11PM, was a bitter sweet feeling since I was unable to share the happiness with my family – Colleen and my parents are always waiting by the phone to know that im safe, then they ask for the race results.

A short race report below—it will be the PG Rated version though so I don’t give my mom white hair (especially since there are three deserts to run this year):

-checkin 1 & 2: running through the cannons, it was relatively fast, downhill, lots of sharp rocks and steep drops.  As I was feeling great one of the locals said: “remember, what goes down…”

-checkin 3&4: uphill, uphill, and uphill.  I saved two “honey stinger chocolate energy waffles”, which back home tasted terrible, but after two miles on the legs, without any real food for a week, these tasted like godiva truffles!

-between 4&5: this was the Turkish road – basically, the never ending mountain in the scorching sun –this part of the course, which lasted for 10k, made leadville’s hopepass seem like a Saturday fun run.  The hill never ended and had endless false peaks – it was a grind.  At some point, either due to dehydration or the elevation.  I motivated myself by thinking what folks who love me would say: my parents and sister would say, keep going strong, we are proud of you.  Colleen would say “clear eyes, full hearts, cant lose”.  And my best friend bobby would say “you paid for this punishment, now suck it up and don’t screw it up this close to the end” – nothing like brutal honesty.

-check point 6: hot water was provided here and I stopped for my final meal of noodles, which took about 4 minutes of downtime

-check point 7&8: night time running with headlamps, typically my speciality, but not on a 1 foot wide trail, with a mountain slide to our left – I think billy-goats would find this terrain difficulty!

-final 10k: coming out of the trails with about 5k remaining, we were running through town, the locals were out and supporting us, it was a great feeling.  Final turn, about a mile to go, this was my moment of glory as I had enough juice to sprint it in! unfortunately, the fairy tale ending didn’t come as the race director saved the most challenging part for last – basically, straight shot downhill on sharp rocks.  One wrong turn could be fatal – the last mile took me about an hour, but I managed to cross the finish line!

Tomorrow, we have a short 8k run into Petra, finishing up infront of the Treasury (same scene from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade).  Followed by a celebration dinner—I cant believe the week is almost over.

Sunday im going to visit the lowest place on earth, the dead sea, and spend a little time at a 5 star spa J 

Thank you all for your support, emails, and thoughts/prayers – it helped power me through the week.

Looking forward to coming home, I miss everyone.

Mom & Dad: see you Monday afternoon, we can facetime on Sunday night, while im in Austria

Cheryl: you must have blisters on your fingers from all those emails you typed!

Colleen: HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!

Dilworth: a South Korean runner, who is fast, has been carrying an acoustic guitar this entire race and playing it at night.  Im willing to sacrifice a 30 minute time penalty to re-enact John Belushi’s Animal House scene, when he’s coming down the stairs…

The emails flowing in are amazing – it feels like my only connection with the outside world.  I never went this long without any news/tele – I saw a local that spoke English and asked “any update on the Olympics medal count?  He was puzzled and replied: “we are in the middle of a desert, we don’t send anyone or follow the WINTER Olympics.”

The camaraderie of all the runners is something special – I believe there are 20+ nations represented.  Throughout today’s stage, I was running beside a Japanese runner, and we both gave each other a smile and nod, as we ran about 10 miles together, we spoke the universal language of peace, love, and running – nah, found out later that he spoke English, but had his ipod on and didn’t want to bother with a loud American – fughetaboutit!

COURSE UPATE: sand, lots and lots of sand.  Colleen, we’ll go on vacation to wherever you want once im back, but please, no beaches!  I finished in the consistent 6 hour range.  The 100 mile, 4 day warm-up is now over and the real racing begins with a 56 mile stage tomorrow.  I believe I conserved enough energy to pull through, but time will tell.  Similar to everyone else, im running low on food but have two spare noodles pack remaining (great for salt intake too) – im saving one for the halfway point of the long march.

My body feels as expected, I guess im comfortable with being uncomfortable – im counting on my mind to carry me for the long grind.

Thanks again for the emails – please keep them coming. 

BOBBY/DILWORTH: McSorleys when im back

BRICK: Good call with the wiley X sunnies – they work great.

MOM: equipment note for next race, bring earplugs – some loud snoring blokes, like a fog horn!

DAD: Looking forward to a celebration steak @ Keens!

CHERYL: I think you should volunteer at June’s Gobi Desert run, think about it!

COLLEEN: GUESS WHAT DAY IT IS?!! HUMP DAY!! J Almost your birthday, cant wait to celebrate.  Topper says hello! J

HARPS: Looking forward to the Ann Arbor race in a few weeks – you guys are gonna do great!

JOHN/MARY: I’m adding a camel to your farm!

Hopefully good news to report later this week.

Gutting it out in Jordan,

I’m overwhelmed by the emails – thank you very much, as mentioned, I cannot reply but will do so once this race is over…and keep them coming!!

“a frog hops along side a caterpillar that is walking on the trail.  The frog asks “how do you keep all those legs in sync?”  the caterpillar was thinking while walking and ended up falling over, off the trail”

I guess the lesson is “don’t think and keep running”

I continue to lighten my bag weight – I can hear my buddy Andrew, ultra marathon superstar, screaming through the computer and shouting “what did I tell you mate? Light is right in the desert – every ounce makes a difference!”  I can know say that I understand!

So around mile 18 I passed a camel race track – no, it was not a mirage!  No worries, I didn’t not gamble away my savings J but I got a hot tip on a camel racing in the 9^th race later tonight!

Course update: although a longer route, it wasn’t too punishing.  I maintain my 6 hour a day pace – as mentioned, my goal is to simply finish this event; but an updated goal is to beat a Japanese runner, who is running in a panda suit!!

Evy: you are a rockstar out here and everyone says hello 

Mom: i think you would fit in at the camel track with your Kentucky derby hat!

Dad: miss your morning texts CULIEAP

Cheryl: seriously, I lost money at the track and need a wire ASAP

Colleen: thinking of you and will see you soon!

Love and miss everyone.

#15 Chris

A Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins with one Step!

Thank you all for the emails – I only can send one blog post and cannot reply but will upon my return.  My time is limited so apologies for the rubbish that you are about to read – no filter and no proof reading J

DAY1:

Within the first ten minutes of the race I was encountered with the most difficult decision that I would ever face: to keep the 1.5 block of cheese and playing card or ditch them.  I did the latter as the extra weight wouldn’t be worth it – doesn’t sound like a lot but over 155+ miles would make a difference—I felt like a pirate ship releasing treasures to go faster.  Now understand this, a block of cheese in the racing world is the highest commodity of equipment—even higher than a solar power charger.  An ounce of cheese could be exchanged for a bag of m&ms (the type with peanut butter in it!).  and guess what? As soon as I finished stage 1 – I was craving cheese, I guess that’s the taste of regret!

DAY2:

The stage was a bit shorter but harder.  During the run I was thinking about when I became  a runner and I typically respond that it was when I ran my first marathon back in May 2010.  But started to think farther back (hell, I could think about the last 32 years since I still had hours to run!)  anyway, I remember walking out of kindergartener with my mom and diane (best friend’s mom) and once we left the school gates, me, joseph, and Cheryl would sprint down the hill running towards a rock in the middle of the field – that rock seemed like Everest at the time, we always knew to climb the South face with the foothold.  Or maybe it was running laps around the bases in little league as my dad was coaching our team.  Maybe I became a runner in h.s. doing windsprints down the hallway after wrestling practice, or in college running away from campus security (uhh…scratch that).  Anyway, after all that thinking I came upon check point 3, which meant only 10k (6.2 miles to run) – I put on happy music that reminded me of my fiancé and imagined that we were running a NYRR race in central park.  I wish that’s how the story ends but the little pink flags that marked the course directed us towards a mountain direction – must be a mistake, I thought! But it wasn’t – it was a narrow (2.5 feet gap) climb that went about 400 yards!  Ugh – anyway, day 2 COMPLETE!

Settled into camp for the opening ceremony, we are all ready to start running tomorrow morning.  Had a fun two days in Jordan and looking forward to sharing photos upon my return.  Everyone is nice, the locals are hospitable, the runners are friendly, and volunteers are awesome.

Thanks to mom for everything, countless hours of preparing my ruck-sack/equipment.  Dad and Cheryl for their support.  Colleen for all her love J

I already read all my emails – keep them coming!  Hope siac had fun at the cherry tree race!

Gonna add some hot water to my dinner and chow down.

Happy running,

Since the beginning of time, mankind has asked one question: How do I train to survive running across the Sahara Desert? Well, perhaps it

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