26 days to Umstead! I am starting to get buyer’s remorse.

Why am I doing this?

Have I trained properly?

Do I have what it takes to run for 30 hours?

Maybe this guy has something –

Police: Man gets shot to avoid work

Detectives say man asked friend to shoot him in the arm so he could skip work

Updated: 9:22 PM ET Feb 29, 2008

What happened to faking a cough? Sheriff's detectives in Franklin County said a man had his friend shoot him in the shoulder so he wouldn't have to go to work.

When he first spoke with deputies, Daniel Kuch, of Pasco, told them he'd been the victim of a drive-by shooting while he was out jogging Thursday. But detectives told KONA radio that Kuch later acknowledged that he asked his friend to shoot him so he could get some time off work and avoid an upcoming drug test.

The friend, Kurtis Johnson, of Burbank, has been arrested for investigation of reckless endangerment. Kuch was booked into the county jail and is expected to be charged with false reporting.

Detectives declined to say where Kuch works, or whether he still has a job. It wasn't known if he had obtained a lawyer.

Oh well, I can’t stand the sight of blood, so I guess I am not going to get out of Umstead that easy.

My training is going well. I continue to run 10-15 miles every morning before work and do a gym workout every evening. I have started to back off on the weights a bit, next week I will start to taper my running mileage.

Friday was the last of my long runs. I ran 15 miles before work and another 14 mile cold, dark and wet run in the evening. I was joined on my evening run by Ma Snail and Sunny who made the experience down right fun! We ran, talked, and walk through 14 miles of rain. This was follower by a late dinner at a local diner.

We ran through every kind of rain there is. “Little bitty stingin' rain... and big ol' fat rain. Rain that flew in sideways. And sometimes rain even seemed to come straight up from underneath.”

Forrest Gump

My pre season purchases arrived this week. I have come to realize that triathletes are way ahead of runners on the techno geek scale. Of course I should have realized this from my past life as a Triathlete. I am the proud owner of on of the original triathlon bikes a Kestrel 4000 full rigged with Dura Ace components, HED disk and the old Scott DH handle bars!

Thanks to my rebirth and rediscover of the triathlon spirit (read in here that I am soon going to announce my intention to do something totally insane) I am much poorer this month. My new toys include:

Newton Running Shoes