I would say third times a charm, but after three long days in a row (9+) my weekly total is looking good, but my foot isn’t. Actually my feet don’t look any worse than normal (I apparently have inheritted my mom’s feet, she always said they were ugly but I like them (oops that probably sounds weird…)). The problem seems to be with a pain (of the week) on the top of my foot. I noticed it yesterday, and of course I had to push it today. It isn’t too bad and I am hoping for some comfort after some ice and a day of rest. It is odd, not sore to the touch or anything, but if I put pressure on it with my finger and then flex my foot it hurts pretty badly. Tomorrow’s rest will be greatly enjoyed.

I am reading an interesting book called CC Pyle’s Amazing Race about a promotor in 1928 who organized a running race across America from LA to NYC. These people were running like 50 mi a day every day with no rest. It amazes me the sorry condition that they were in along the way. The allure of cash prizes was enough to keep them going. Some of them had trainers helpingthem out, but mostly they starved and dehydrated along the way and relied on strangers in the towns they ran through to keep them going. They slept in tents through all sorts of horrible weather and were woefully unprepared gear-wise. At one point Pyle hired a cobbler to come along to repair shoes if the racers could afford it. Many ran barefoot until they could run no more. 200 started out and into Oklahoma they are down to 80 or so. It was a wildly popular even for awhile until people got bored with the shambling corpses pretending to be runners. In one funny story one of the racers donned a pair of bright red shorts hoping to seperate himself from teh other runners and gain some popularity. He didn’t get too far before a bull in a nearby field saw him and gave chase. He set the record for the fastest time that day!