Laying the Groundwork

My name is Ken Bansemer, and I am a runner...nearly 10 years now.  During that time I have progresseed from 5k's to 10k's, from 1/2 marathons to full marathons.  I will never win any races I enter, but that has never been my goal.  I chose to run for a variety of reasons - exercise, thinking time, cool destinations, and testing myself.  Two years ago I ran the Goofy Challenge -  39.3 miles over two days at Disney World with Team-In-Training to celebrate turning 40, and in the process raised $8,000 for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.  At that Team-In-Training event, I met Lynn Pettus, who is now a good friend and often my running partner. Besides the Disney Marathon, we have also run the Country Music and Chicago Marathons together.  She is good!  Qualified for the Boston Marathon and will be doing that one solo in April (did I mention I have not qualified for Boston?  Must have been an oversight).

During our training in the fall of 2009 for Chicago, I mentioned to Lynn there was an event I was interested in doing.  "No more marathons", I said, "I want to do something bigger".  I proceeded to tell her about the Gore-Tex Trans Rockies Run, a 6-day, 113 mile run across some of the Colorado Rockies.  She was intrigued, and wanted to know more.  Ah...I now had her attention (of course, she is up for anything running related).

Why did I mention the event to her? Well, it is a team event - two runners must compete.  I couldn't go solo on this one.  We agreed to think about it and consider it is a possible future run.  I am pretty sure Lynn didn't give it much thought after that.  I, on the other hand, had already been thinking about the event for most of 2009 and began to set in motion a plan to MAKE THIS HAPPEN in 2010! 

Only needed to clear a few hurdles first, such as:

• Needed to get Lynn committed to participate
• I sucked in the Chicago Marathon, so why would anyone besides me think I could do 113 miles?
• My wife was already skeptical about my desire to do longer runs - would she buy in? (FYI - I see the mental eye-roll when I mention I want to do an Ultra someday)
• Could I gain the mental edge needed to endure months of training, and essentially run a bunch of marathon distances over 6 straight days? Up steep hills? In high altitude?
• How could I combine this personal endeavor with a charitable component, like I did with the Goofy Challenge?  Finding a way to benefit others is important to me, but would people donate in these difficult economic times.

First things first.  I sent a short email to Lynn in early January that simply read:  "Gore Tex Run.  Aug 22-27. Are you in? Let me know".

A response took only a few minutes: "I'm in". 

The wheels were in motion - I had my partner.  Time to work on the other items!