Big News!

I am so very excited! I will be participating in the 26th Marathon des Sables in Morocco, Africa from April 1 through April 11, 2011. I feel incredibly fortunate to have this opportunity. It will be a huge challenge for me, not necessarily because of the mileage, about 150 miles over six days (not to be taken lightly!) but because of the heat and my Addison's Disease. I will be going from below freezing temps to desert temps. I will need to figure out my salt intake and florinef adjustments rather quickly.

I already have a race number (597). I've been training as if I would participate in this race. I took all of November, after the Antelope Island 100k, off from running (not necessarily exercising) to give my body and mind a rest. I resumed a walk/run program in the beginning of December. This year, I am adding some cross training to keep me from getting muscular imbalances and more stress fractures. I've added pull ups 2X per week, yoga once a week, skate skiing in place of one of my runs and CrossFit when I can fit it in. We've got a new gym in Teton Valley! I've been doing a lot of running there instead of my cold, clammy garage or outside in the snow.

I am so looking forward to knocking a couple of things off my bucket list at one time. Since working Gemini Adventures Mountain RATS and Desert RATS a couple of summers ago, I've wanted to do a stage race. I wasn't able to run either of these races or work them again because both are in the summer and I just don't have time to do them now. Going to Africa is on my bucket list too. Yay!

I will post more about my training, heat training, pack training and Addison's in future posts.