Adventures in Onionism

I slept for another 17 hours with a little break for breakfast and a shower, and now Lucas' mom Jan and I are on the train to Cham from Les Houches. I need to turn in my drop bag and then line up, and that's it. Hopefully this 6pm start will go better than my first two (Grindstone and Standhope). I think sleeping until 1 pm is my best hope. Yesterday I checked in, was given my empty drop bag, bought some ultralight waterproof over mitts and extra water capacity to try and lighten my pack and meet the extra "heat kit" requirements.  (There are numerous specific gear requirements. I didn't game/optimize as much as I should have. Panty hose and surgical gloves as tights and waterproof gloves, etc. More on that in a future post, perhaps.) Anyway nothing much to report yet, just trying to stay out of the sun until the 6pm start.

I'm in Les Houches, France, getting ready to run the UTMB 100-Miler (actually 106). I took a red-eye Sunday night from Reno to Denver to DC. Then Tuesday I took a red-eye from DC to Geneva. Scott Jurek was in business class on my flight, and the lady I say next to was a runner's mom headed to crew him. I took trains from Geneva airport to Geneva downtown to St Gervais Les Bains La Fayet to Les Houches, all with under five minutes to spare for transfers (man, Europe is so civilized). I couldn't check in yet, so I headed up to Chamonix, which is quite a zoo this week, and watched TDS runners finish, and scoped out where I would need to go for check-in, but also was so exhausted that I collapsed and napped in the grass for a bit.  Finally I checked into my room and went to bed around 5pm. I woke up multiple times, but thankfully I slept mostly well FOR 16-17 HOURS!  Snuck in under the wire for breakfast, and now I'm headed to check in. It's hot this weekend, so the ext...

 Did I go to Alaska? Man, that feels like forever ago. As soon as I got back, I got to work on the house in Reno that Amy and I bought. We closed before Alaska but the sellers needed a short rentback. As soon as we saw the house empty I realized there was a bunch of work to do. We painted the whole interior, we had an electrician put GFIs on every circuit and improve wiring, had HVAC people do their thing, and then of course after we painted and moved into the new place and spent too much time cleaning the rental we were moving out of, the electrician did more work requiring drywall repair and repainting. At least we know the paint color--Swiss Coffee!  The most stressful thing was installing a new exterior front door. God, so stressful. I would trade a lot of stats knowledge for just a little carpentry skills. The new door closes well and is plumb and level and square and true, but I put pressure treated lumber under it instead of a PVC sill, and the latch side reveal is a li...