Injinji! ..and other news

I've been running in Injinji for the past few months and love the lack of blisters and super comfort and am thrilled to be part of the Injinji Team! It's amazing what covering each of your toes in these socks have done to prevent blister: zero blisters in two ultras this year, and in training, as well . (I messed the beta I gave Injinji in the press release; I have raced at two races this year so far, not one as it says in the press release; my mistake)

Taking off in the morning for what should be a scorching 50k trail race in Bellingham, WA, the Chuckanut 50k. Still spots available so feel free to come on up.

Some podcasts of this week..Trail Runner Nation
http://trailrunnernation.com/2012/03/dave-mackey/

and.. "Running Smart"..
http://runningstupid.libsyn.com/webpage/running-stupid-cv-dave-mackey-interview-

Heading up to Chuckanut 50K tomorrow for what should be a serious hurt fest. In attendance will be the 2011 World Mountain running Champion (Max King) and the 2012 US Ski Mountainering Champion (Luke Nelson), as well as maybe a couple .. like 20.. of the top ultrarunners in the US and Canada. Well, I hope Max and Luke will be satisfied with 2nd or 3rd place.. :)

Last time I raced in Bellingham was at a triathlon.. then one and only one I have competed in.. 15 years ago. Was dead last out of the water on the half mile swim out of 200 racers, including little kids and old ladies. I side stroked and floated on my back for the whole section.. treading water here and there. The lifeguards were seriously worried about me. I must have come onto the beach 5 minutes after the next closest swimmer, jumped on my borrowed mt bike (for the `7 mile road section), and hot footed the 5 mile trail section around the lake, not passing many racers because I was so toasted. Finishing that race is up there in top 5 of difficult events of all time for me. May I have a slightly different experience this weekend.

Re: life back in Colorado, I am currently rotating at a community health clinic (Salud Clinic) in Longmont, CO, working in family practice. I have had some dreams of working in FP for a long time, and am finding the work incredibly rewarding and demanding. It is an amazing experience to apply what I was taught in classes to the real medical world; they are night and day, and feel that the application of medicine to a real clinical setting is harder than school was. This is the "art" they talked about. In this clinic, all the patients are of lower income, and many have delayed their preventative care, or come from backgrounds that have set them up for barriers in their lives to keep them from taking care of themselves. This experience has only reinforced my belief that people need help and deserve it from others, in the form of a solid well funded (or at least adequately funded) safety net, and everyone can't just go it alone.

Okay, back to racing mode.. time for some sleep..