incredible athletes

Lance Armstrong ran the NYC marathon again this year, and dropped 13 minutes off his time. He was the 112th(?) man to finish, with a time of 2 hours 46 minutes and change. He's incredible.

Tim Borland just finished running 63 marathons in 63 days to raise awareness for a disease I can't spell or remember the name of. It affects the muscles of children and they usually die before reaching adulthood. I think The A-T Cure is what his quest was called. He average a 4:15 time. That's pretty impressive.

Dean Karnazes ran 50 marathons in 50 days in 50 states last fall. The North Face Endurance challenge. He blogged about every race and that might have been one of the cooler things about it. Some days he ran a fast marathon, other days he kept it slow and ran with the group.

I know there are tons of amazing female runners out there, but it seems that they still aren't getting the recognition. Pam Reed. She runs Ultras all over the place, hold records, finishes before most of the men, and is the Director for the Tucson marathon. Deena Kastor, I can't actually tell you about any of her accomplishments, but she's a name to know. When will women start getting equal coverage?

I work with an amazing runner. Janet. I've googled her before and her name came up with more results and course records than anyone would have guessed. We all know Janet is one of "those crazy runners" but I don't think many people I work with get what it is to run an Ultra. 100 miles of running! Sometimes more. Of the people I sit around at work, few, if any of them run, and well, they basically think I'm crazy. But I don't think any of them gets the two sides of the coin. On one hand, it can hurt like hell to run. To the point where your brain gets fuzzy, you feel like you can't even put one foot in front of the other, breathing is hard, thinking is harder- but despite all of that you don't just stop. You push through. Most people wouldn't make it through that, but those who know what the other side of the coin is like will.