We are flying out of LAX tomorrow at 6am, heading first to Denver, then on to Rapid City, South Dakota. From there we are renting a car and driving to Deadwood for – drum roll, please – the Deadwood Mickelson Trail Marathon. I’m both excited and a little alarmed at the prospect of running 26.2 miles. We haven’t gone that distance since the LA Marathon in 2002, so it’s been a while (and that race really sucked). We’ve been training so I feel pretty confident of finishing, and hope to post a time in or around five hours.

We’re taking all of our various cameras, and I plan on having one with me during the race (along with my faithful iPod Nano), so there will be lots and lots of photos taken over the next four days. We are doing the “Volksmarch” on Saturday, up to the Crazy Horse Memorial. They only do it once a year, so this will be quite a treat! it’s a 10K roundtrip hike. so should be a nice warmup for the marathon the next day. The only other must-do is a visit to Wall, home of the world’s largest jackalope. We just got a new toy, a Garmin Nuvi 350 that we are taking with us to help us navigate the wilds of South Dakota. We also loaded a couple of audio books on the little guy to keep us entertained while driving (since we’re renting a car, we can’t do the iPod in the car that we usually do at home).

The most alarming aspect of the whole trip is the fact that we are leaving ALL of our laptops at home!! I’m already feeling a little jittery, but I keep telling myself it’ll be good for us. So no blogging from me until next Monday when we’re back home in sunny So Cal.