Nine more sleeps

I’m finding it hard to believe that this year’s Everglades Challenge is set to kick off in just nine sleeps. I’m hoping that the nervousness I'm feeling is that healthy nervousness one gets before doing something that could be slightly dodgy and a fair bit challenging; to keep me on my toes and thinking, thinking on whether I’ve packed all the right gear, and psychology, to get me from Tampa Bay to Key Largo and out of any possible scrapes.

I’m not in the best of shape, health and fitness wise, in comparison to last year. The cold/flu bug going around has hit hard locally, and I’ve succumbed twice in the last month. And the second cold brought my old asthma on, which has me merrily puffing away on all sorts of junk many times a day to try and beat it. I’m somewhat delusionally lucky that I’m not a full-blown “asthmatic”; I just cough and gasp like hell for a couple of weeks after any cold, and only take my meds when needed.

So not a hell of a lot of training has been going on.

But I’m a great fan of Chris Duff’s mantra, “Never put your body where your mind hasn’t been first.” At least this time my body has once been there, but I’m still sleeplessly running through the entire route by memory, and matching that with my Blue Charts and Google Earth.

Dawn and I drive down to Tampa Bay together on Wednesday next week, the race starting 0700 on Saturday, March 1. Fingers crossed I’ll be breathing right by then!