It's Happening

Today is Friday, I'm leaving on Wednesday and I'm racing next Saturday. It even scares me to write it down. Events are taking a life of their own. My wife wants to make life altering decisions (nothing negative, don't worry) and I just can't think about that right now. We've agreed to talk about it when I come back, but I can see that it's eating at her. I'm worried about my gear. With all the increased security screening, when they X-ray my luggage, they are going to see 4 large metal bottles (3 thermos and one empty fuel bottle). I have a feeling they will investigate. I just NEED my gear to make it to Anchorage.

Earlier this week I followed the Arrowhead 135, looking at runners drop one after the other. 45 runners started and 19 finished. They had very cold weather (-20F or -28C) at night and anyone who made sketchy equipment decisions was in for a world of hurt and had to drop. I believe that my gear would have been up to that challenge.

Something that really made it feel real, is when I started seeing the weather forecast for the start day on the 10 day forcast. A bit warm (barely above freezing during the day), with snow, snow, snow and more snow. At least I don't see a thaw. The snow is something else. Pulling a sled is not fun. Pulling a sled in soft snow is going to be interesting. Well it could be worse: I could be riding a bike in soft snow. That can't be easy. Maybe I'll need those snowshoes after all.

So me and Junior (that's for Sancho Junior, since Sancho the sled is not coming with me) are going to spend some quality time on the trail, just about a week from now.