Thursday, June 16, 2011

The star-spangled runner: On your marks for the Los Angeles to New York Footrace 2011

"Treat it like a job" – that's the advice I need to remember this summer. It won't be your average nine to five. Going to "work" in the next few weeks will mean weaving through the Joshua trees of the Mojave Desert; scaling the peaks of the rugged Black Mountains in Arizona, battling across the windswept high plains of Oklahoma, and through the forests of Missouri.
But it's a good tip for tackling the epic task ahead. This Sunday, I will be in Huntington Beach in Los Angeles, with 15 others, for the start of the LA to New York City 2011 footrace (the world's longest, incidentally).
Three thousand, two hundred and twenty miles across an entire continent stretch ahead, all of which I plan to do on under own steam. Fifteen states; 45 miles a day; just the one pair of legs. In just over ten weeks' time, on August 27, I hope to run into New York, seeing the skyscrapers of Manhattan for the first time in my life.
You may well wonder why (and no, my favourite film isn't Forrest Gump). My mum certainly does. She hardly leaves Leicestershire. What's making me do this?

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