Driving in, I experienced deja vu all over again. I remembered the limited passing lanes of the road into Ennis. I remembered the quaint town itself. And I remembered picking up my packet at this park.
And when I saw the race director next to the map of the course, I remembered the run. This is not going to be easy. But is it ever?
I picked up my race bibs for both tomorrow’s Madison Marathon and for Sunday’s Big Sky Marathon. There’s a bit of course overlap, but whereas Sunday promises a quad burning Second Longest Downhill Road Marathon on Planet Earth (which by the way means it’s a long downhill course, not that the course itself is long — it’s still 26.2 miles), tomorrow’s Madison Marathon is billed as “The Highest Road Marathon on Planet Earth.” My brain can only hold so many things at one time so I’m trying to only focus on prepping for tomorrow.
Here’s some words of wisdom pull quotes from the Runner Information Packet for tomorrow:
First of all, let’s talk about potential “adverse interactions between bears and people.”
But bears aren’t really the big worry. The big worry are the Sheep Guard Dogs.
That’s right — sheep guard dogs. And what do we do if we see sheep guard dogs? The one thing we’re absolutely positively NOT supposed to do is run away. That’s right, in a marathon race we’re NOT to run away. The race director acknowledges the paradox of all of this:
I vaguely recall this from six years ago. I think I just said, “baa ram ewe… bam ram ewe…” and it all worked out in the end.
I mean, really, what could possibly go wrong here? A crazy marathon on Saturday… another one on Sunday… a six hour drive back to SLC for a race on Tuesday… then a couple hour drive back up to Idaho for a race on Saturday, followed by a quick drive back to SLC to fly out that night. I can’t see any weak link in that chain of events.
The one hiccup I guess is that everything was sold out in Ennis so I’m at an AirBNB an hour or so away in Belgrade, MT. So that means for the 5:15 AM shuttle out of Ennis to the start line tomorrow, I need to leave here by no later than 4:15. Sigh. What time is it as I post this? 7:19 PM? Time for bed, I guess.
Sigh, sigh, sigh.
Baa ram ewe.