Random stuff, random excerpts about horses and whatnot. The huge text is my own doing. Excerpt from an interview with Brian Sell from Runners World: RW: And what's the mileage been consistently for the last eight weeks or so?" BS: About 140 or higher." RW: And, as you indicate with the high week of 162 miles and the recent weekly average of 140, one of the things that happened since you've been a post-collegiate runner and in the Hansons program for awhile is that you can handle training more than ever before. BS: I've must been kicking it up about ten miles a week or so every year as far as my max (maximum) week goes and the weeks leading up to that. Last year, for Helsinki, I was maxing out at 140 or 145, something like that. I don't know how far you can go (laughs)-- running 200 miles a week someday. RW: We'd guess that some of the people who did 200 miles a week were real plodders. BS: Yeah. We're around 6:00 average (per mile) for most of our stuff. It's not real fast, but it's definitely not walking either......It's kind of the American dream, I guess, to work your way up. That's kind of what we're doing here. We don't have any superstars at the Hansons, but we're all working every day, trying to work our way up. I guess the big thing is that it's sort of proof that anybody can do it. -------------------------------- Excerpt from DW's race report at the Sap Run last week in Vermont. I ran this thing before I moved a couple years ago; it was raining and muddy with lots of puddles. DW ran it and encountered horses. (see pics here) My head swims with metaphors, analogies and smilies. But I can't put them all together, because I wasn't there. DW does a good job describing the feeling of being reeled in and dropped by Seabiscuit. "I finished 11th of 103 (3rd in 30-39 age) in Westford on Sunday. 6 mile race ... hilly, on country roads. It was funny, at about mile 2 I heard people behind me yell "horses!!" and I figured there must be somebody riding horses or driving a cart coming up the road and the other racers were just being courteous ... so, then I could hear the clomp, clomp getting closer, closer, and louder and louder ... so, I turned to see three stampeding horses (no riders) about 10 yards behind me coming straight at me with no intention of going around. I had no choice but to ditch it, I turned to my right and cleared a spring run off stream at the edge of the road and landed in a soft, wet meadow. I just barely got out of the way in time, I got back on the road and immediately resumed running - the horses now bearing down on three runners ahead of me. I have to tell! you, that took it out of me ... I'll admit, mile three is hilly, but the baling out jump into the field and climbing back onto the road took the wind out of my sails, it was almost a mile before I really felt like I was back in stride. It's funny now, but scared the shit out of me when I saw those horses flying at me."