The Big Race: T-minus 3 Days

I spent my first full day in Moab, UT.  Not far from the town the scenery is pretty ordinary, just flat, brown desert.  But a few miles out of town everything changes.  Tall, steep canyon walls pull up out of the ground and everything is one of three colors: red (rocks), green (trees) and blue (sky).  Those are the primary colors of canyonland.

My dad and I toured Arches National Park and saw some really spectacular scenery.  Here are a couple of my favorite pictures from the day: (click on them to see them larger)

That last arch was 300 feet wide; it looked like a giant suspension bridge.  If I had to pick one word to describe this place it would have to be "alien."  Everything just looked strange, otherworldly.  In fact there's a blown up photo of the Mars landscape in the Science Center at BYU and Moab looks just like that.

I got bronchitis during the middle of last week, so I haven't done any workouts other than my back exercises since then.  It's a little nerve-racking to have completely stopped training for so long before the race, but I knew that my best chance at making a full recovery was going to be by resting.  You are supposed to taper before the race anyway, so eight days of complete inactivity should leave me pretty dang fresh.  As soon as my lungs clear up I will head out to the course and do some easy workouts.

I'm not as excited to be here as I thought I would be, in fact I've been in something of a malaise.  Not depressed, but solemn, somber.   After months of training to finally be here and be so close I thought I would be amped up.  I think it's taking so many days off from training, I've started to lose that fire.  Hopefully when I get back out there and move around that thrill will come back and I can shake this gloomy feeling.