Greetings again,
I hope everyone is well and that the new year is treating you well. As for me, it's a new season for a lot of things. First of all, I have a new job with a new company, so that's exciting. Anytime you go somewhere new, there's always a new challenge, and I'll definitely be challenged with some of the biotech process design and project execution work that I'll be doing. It's not always that exciting, but it's a great chance for me to step outside of the box. Special thanks to everyone at Barry-Wehmiller Design Group, which helped support my run last year at Badwater with a generous donation to help pay personal expenses. Hopefully, I'll be able to leverage that relationship to do some good fundraising this year for World Harvest Mission as part of my 2007 Badwater Ultramarathon adventure. Goal is to raise $4000 dollars this year. Let me know if you want to help; I'm designing some soccer style technical shirts to sell to help meet this goal as well.

I was too late to sign up for the Way To Cool 50k, so I just did the Ruth Anderson 50k on Saturday. What a beautiful day in San Francisco! I am convinced that a low 70s day with a cool breeze is probably as good as it gets at Lake Merced, close to the beach and the Pacific. It'll probably be cold as heck in the summer knowing San Francisco, but for now, it's all good. I ran a respectable 4:16, but was slowed over the last 1/3 of the race with soreness in my right knee. I was definitely picking up the pace at the end and felt good about staying below a sub 7:00 50 mile pace. My patella tendon was irritated and I've been going through a regimen of icing and heat to get it back to normal. I have the Diablo 50m in three weeks and the Silver State 50 in May, so I don't want be out of commission.

I pride myself on keeping my body in excellent physical condition, but I take extra precautions as it relates to my right knee since it was the one surgically operated on 9 years ago to repair a torn ACL. I do not want to tear other ligaments and keeping my muscles/tendons strong is a big part of that. I can still hear the tearing in my knee from that day 9 years ago while playing a stupid intramural flag football game, like tearing the fabric of a blanket in two. As the training ramps up for Western States 100 (in the Sierras) and the Badwater Ultramarathon, the hardest part is to continue to maintain the balance in my life. There is so much other stuff that contributes richly to my life, such as the work for World Harvest Mission, or my work with high schoolers at my church, and I don't want to marginalize it. The most exciting thing I'm looking forward to. I have a friend from Uganda who is visiting here in the States. He's staying in Texas but having problems getting the documentation so he can start working. He's trying to save up money to pay off expenses back in Uganda and help his family out, so if you can say a prayer for him, it would be much appreciated. I'm not quite sure how to help him, except to try to see what procedures were available for him to obtain the visa and work papers he needs to do it legally.

Alright, that's all from me. Stay strong and keep on movin'; the race is long. God bless.

Gundy