Stuff I'm Chasing

Here's some of what's on my mind these days ...

• 65 pushups in 2 minutes. Did 60 on Saturday. Hard, this test. Fun, too.

• 200 Miles in 72 hours. Last year, I notched 183.5 miles at Three Days at the Fair 72-Hour. Way proud of that total, but there is a lot of room for improvement there. I slept a LOT across those four days (9 a.m. Thursday to 9 a.m. Sunday), and also spent a significant chunk of early Sunday morning on my tush waiting for a cold rainstorm to pass by. The sleep breaks make sense. The sitting was wimpy. This year, my hope is more movement and less wimpy.

• 25 pullups in 2 minutes. My best so far is 23. Very, very hard -- this one.

• Another Umstead 100 finish. I have 11 of 'em at Umstead 100. Here's hoping that I find that much-beloved-to-me finish line sometime early morn this April 1.

• A 15-second Crow Pose. 'Nuff said here.

• Keep the streak cooking. Coming up on 5 years. No plans to take a break. Plenty of time to rest in and around each day's session. Plus, superb motivator for those days when weather or a ridiculously full life schedule make you question the sanity of heading out the door.

• Really Long Thursdays. Been coming in late on Thursday mornings for awhile now. Great opportunity to punch out 4-plus-hour runwalks without getting in the way of weekend family jazz. And now that high school hoops season is about gone and ref duties with obligatory late nights have diminished, these can stretch to maybe 5 hours now and again. Way psyched to keep these rolling and package them with ...

• A couple marathon finish lines. Washington's Birthday Marathon this coming Sunday and Shamrock Marathon -- hello 5:00 pace group co-leader!!! -- in mid-March. Super excited for both of those as significant bricks in the wall for Umstead and 3Days72 and ...

• 100 miles of Reddish Knob Road. There. I said it. Don't know that it will happen this summer or even this year, but this one has been calling to me for some time now, and it needs my answer. From the Briery Branch Reservoir outhouse to the Reddish Knob parking lot is 6.7 miles. If I'm doing the math correctly, it seems that one would need to do seven complete up and downs and then one more up for 100.5 miles. All pavement. Not entirely sure about the elevation change, but it is in the neighborhood of 34,000 feet or something stupid. So my answer: yes.