San Antonio to St. Louis to Newark to Paris to Mauritius to Reunion Island to Diagonale des Fous!

That’s the easy part. Then, I’m supposed to take a taxi from the airport in the north of the island to packet pickup an hour away in the south. Afterwards, I’ll taxi to the hotel which looks to be back up the coast another half hour.

The last bit of the puzzle is figuring out exactly how I’ll get to the race start from the hotel. I just got word I was signed up for a shuttle, but I’m not sure where I need to go to catch it.

Does this make anybody nervous?

And you all know I don’t speak French — though my dad did set me up with great lessons on his iPod. And I still have 30 hours before I touch down, so maybe I will be able to ask for shuttle directions when I arrive.

As daunting as 30k of vert and 100 miles is, I am going to be relieved to just look for course markers and follow them.

This race has a 66 hour cutoff. Strangely, that’s almost exactly how long it’ll take me to fly to and from Reunion Island. Omen? (Good or bad?)

My friend Marissa, has another friend who’s running, and she emailed introduced us yesterday. He made the mistake of mentioning he was fluent in French and sharing his phone number. He may just have acquired a satellite. 🙂

Until tomorrow!