Leaving for the North Country 50 miler in Michigan and Big Storm in Toronto

   Well, Saturday is my first 50 miler. I really have no excuse not to finish it. My achillies is fine, my training runs went OK, and the weather on Saturday in Manistee National Forest is sposed to be perfect.

Weather for the Run looks awesome.

     So I guess I'll just take it easy and try to make sure I finish, so I can get all the cool swag, including the Flava Flav sized finishers medal. But you never know what can happen once the race starts.

Yes, it's that big.

I have been training with really heavy 5 year old New Balance trail shoes, so my brand new La Sportiva Crosslites feel light as a feather. It's my 6th pair of Crosslites.

Some "after the storm" shots

Hit the front of the house. This is one street West of us.

Took off the front porch

Same house

Here are some pictures of the storm, trees down all over the 'hood.

This tree took out a fence in Mt. Pleasant.

The kids check out the damage. We strolled around for an hour or two.

Know what that is?

The top of this street light that blew over!

I went down in the ravine expecting carnage , but only 3 small trees down. Kind of disappointing.

I was easily able to circumcise this mess

Doh

A much more impressive tree that fell over a while ago.

 Anyhow, back to packing. Leave Friday a.m. hope to land in Manistee, Michigan(just south of Grand Rapids, if that helps) just in time to pick up the race kits, run Saturday morning (Portage has a 10K run in Toronto at the same time!), finish sometime around 5:30 p.m. (10 hours), hopefully a bit faster. Ray, Eddie and Captain are doing the trail marathon, and have pledged to sit by the cooler quaffing beer until I'm done, which will give them a 4-5 hour headstart of drinking time. Guess I'll be driving back to the cabin. Doh!
  The marathoners start 20 minutes before the 50 miles, which is nice. It's a little demoralizing (I'm told) to be passed by 100 marathoners when you start the 50 miler before the marathon. Kind of like the Ultra runners at Dances with Dirt must feel when the relay teams go sprinting past them. Not good.
  So no posts until monday, hopefully it's the news that I just finished my first 50 miler.