I don't know what it is about traveling the world with the hopes of surviving a distance that most people aren't comfortable covering in a car with their family, much less doing that distance with total strangers on foot. But I have to say there is some kind of magnetic draw that either emanates from Mary, the volunteers, her pretty flags from all over the world at each days finish line or those fantastic shiny metals you get at the end. I have vowed to myself on two separate occasions, on two separate continents that the only way I would ever see Mary again, is if I happened to peruse her website to relive my past glories/follies. Cut to present day and I am sitting inside a rather nice room in the Four Seasons, Giza and have spent the day, packing and repacking. Then did four miles on the treadmill with the backpack on and got depressed because it is too heavy by like ten pounds. So then it was back for some repacking. Throughout the course of the day I am filled with self doubt over a list of things: did i lose enough weight, did i do enough long runs, should i have spent more time running in the sand, can I really afford not to take my bag of candy corn... and the list of doubts goes on and on. but I keep busy packing and repacking and in two days I will be overwhelmed in the checkin process and then the lovely bus ride out to the middle of nowhere. I guess the reason I keep coming back is I never thought this was the kind of thing I could ever accomplish. I mean the first race was hard, but the Gobi March in 06 was so, so hard. I wasn't sure I was going to make one stretch of it. When I finished that last race, I had such a feeling of accomplishment, and that combined with the life experiences from those trips are like a long lasting drug that is hard to flush from your system. It provides a focus that is so often loss in the business of everyday life. So I am back because I need a fix of that medicine so to speak, I know that it is going to hurt going down though! more to come patrick