Headed for South Dakota

Tomorrow, Emily and I leave for the great state of South Dakota. We're headed to the Black Hills, where we'll participate in the Deadwood-Mickelson Trail Marathon. It's a marathon run on a rails-to-trails gravel path, that finishes in downtown Deadwood. Here's a photo from last year's marathon:

As you can guess, it's more scenic in SD than it is here in central Illinois. I'm really looking forward to running through the trees, alongside swiftly flowing water, through cool mountain air.

One of the advantages of the rails-to-trails route is that when the path was laid out some hundred-odd years ago, avoiding hills was the primary motivation. It's just too hard to get a train to climb steep or rolling hills. But hills are hills, and you can't wish them away, so the compromise that was reached for the 26 miles I'll be running on looks like this:

It's going to be a rough first thirteen miles, but hopefully the last half will make up for it.

Emily and I will also be doing some sightseeing while we're there, including visits to Mt. Rushmore and the Crazy Horse monument, as well as a full day of looking at other attractions. We'll update you once we return.