Lake Tahoe - 5 weeks to go

It's now five weeks until our races in Lake Tahoe. Claire and our Austin friend Carolyn are running the venerable Tahoe Triple - three beautiful marathons in three days all around the edge of the lake, partly in California, the rest in Nevada. I'm crewing for them for the first two marathons on Friday and Saturday, then setting off on the Midnight Ultra to run the lake in one go - 72 miles - starting at 9pm on Saturday night. Claire and Carolyn will start their third and final marathon 11 hours later at 8am. If things go according to plan, we'll all finish at the South Lake Tahoe waterfront at roughly the same time on Sunday. What are the chances?!

We ran short but daily on some beautiful country trails while camping in France this summer, and since then the English summer has been a great one for running - cool and quite dry. We've managed to get our weekly mileage up into the 60-80 miles range without getting (a) injured, (b) ill or (c) bored. In England, we've found a new "hilly" route which takes us over some good inclines through pretty Lea Valley farmland. Seven miles from our base - our boat Purple Haze - is a public toilet with water, so we are able to adjust our fluids at a convenient spot during each run.

Claire's injury problems have gradually subsided, and her sciatic hamstring is bothering her less and less each week. My only misadventure occurred two weeks ago; I managed to trip on a boat's mooring pin and landed squarely on my ribcage on top of the water bottle I was carrying. Since then, sneezing has not been any fun. But that's it for the doctor's report - all systems go for Tahoe.