I have finally healed all of my bike wounds and have my weekly mileage up to where I should be since my last bike crash in early June.  While I have physically healed, I feel that there are still a few things missing in this training cycle.  My last couple of marathons I have been able to mimic the weather or training conditions of the upcoming marathon.  The Switzerland marathon is a trail marathon and it is at 6200 feet. 

When I was training for Antarctica, I was spending a lot of time in New Hampshire and it was almost the coldest and snowiest winter on record.  There were several days when it was actually warmer in Antarctica than it was in New Hampshire.

When I was training for Cuba, I did all my training at my house in Florida.  While the heat was about the same, the humidity was far worse in Cuba, but I was able to power through and finish because of training in the Florida heat.

I had first thought that I could go up to Mt. Washington and run around some, but I would have had to drive up and I would have needed to spend a few weeks up there training.  I have been running the trails in Palm Coast a few times and haven’t fallen yet – which is my biggest problem with trail running!

So, I have decided the best thing to do is just to keep up the running base of 35 to 40 miles per week and I will just power my way through the altitude and the trail run.  How could it go wrong on my 59^th birthday??