It's not like I didn't know 50 kilometers was a long way to run. I did. Really. Thirty-one whole miles. I did the math. Twice. And I trained. A lot. But really, there's only so much preparation you can do, and nobody warned me about the goat.

(For photographic evidence, check out my Flickr page. Unfortunately, there are no pictures of the goat. But if you look closely, there's a good chance I'm drooling at the finish line, and hey, that's almost as good as a goat. http://www.flickr.com/photos/ahream/)

The Calico 50K started and ended in Calico, CA, a rebuilt 1800s silver mining town turned Japanese tour bus stop in the Mojave desert.

Mojave. Desert. (Yes, the picture is starting to form, isn't it?)

There are a number of reasons normal people don't attempt to run 31 miles in the desert in the middle of winter. We'll review of few of these now.

When my husband and I got up at 5 a.m. to drive from the charming city of Barstow, Crossroads of America (i.e. "boy, do we have a lot of freeways"), to the race site, it was 29 degrees, which turns out to be the exact temperature at which blood stops flowing to my extremities...also apparently to my brain because I lined up at the start anyway. And I smiled. And I waved. There is photographic evidence of this. I was CHIPPER.

This would not last.

The second reason normal people don't attempt to run 31 miles in the desert is SAND. Lots and lots of sand. Have you ever tried to run in sand? No, probably not. Why? Because you're smart. You understand the physics. You know how that's going to end. A guy at the pre-race dinner the night before actually said to me, "Oh, don't worry. It's hard packed. It's FINE." We can only assume he lives next to a pit of quicksand because "hard packed" appears to be a relative term. By mile 17, my quads were screaming.

Mile 17 is generally where the wheels came off the wagon for me. I was way, way more tired than I had expected to be. And just as this was dawning on me, the wind started to blow. Wind would be the third reason normal people don't run in the desert. And although this sounds unlikely, I swear to you it is true. The wind was never, not once at my back. I took hurricane-force gusts to the face for the next 15 miles. Combine that with the aforementioned sand, and it is safe to say that my skin is very well exfoliated. (What's that you say? 15 + 17 = 32? Yes! Yes, it does! Thank you course-measuring guy! That bonus mile was fun!)

It was also during mile 17 that I encountered The Rocky Gorge of Death, a blood-chilling 90-degree descent carved between two mountains and filled with the loose, sharp rocks that had fallen and accumulated into a slide right out of the seventh circle of hell. Confronted with this, I did what any scared shitless person would do. I sat down on my butt and slid the entire way down. Oh sure, my palms looked like hamburger, but did I have a chunk of razor sharp rock embedded in my cranium? No, sir. Serious trauma avoided. And what did I find at the bottom? A guy in a Marines sweatshirt waiting for me. He was part of the emergency medical squad stationed there to assist runners who had fallen and sustained serious injuries. "Only one so far," he informed me.

The rest of the run was mostly a blur punctuated by the fear of peeing. You see, ultramarathons don't come with cushy amenities like port-a-potties. As my husband says, "The world is your toilet." Okay, I'm tough. I can hang with that. EXCEPT the night before I had been required to sign a release saying I understood that the run wound through the habitats of sidewinders, rattlesnakes, tarantulas and any number of other dangerous creatures, including the kangaroo rat, that might decide my bare buttocks would make a tasty snack. Powdering my nose has never been so exciting.

By mile 24, I was exhausted, sore, possibly dehydrated and really no longer in a position to trust my senses, which is why when I made it to the second-to-the-last aid station, I said with some trepidation, "What IS that?" hoping like hell everybody else could see it to. "It" was a small, furry creature straight out of Jim Henson's muppet shop, all fuzz and eyeballs with a head drastically out of proportion to its tiny body.

"It's a pygmy goat," the volunteer said. "Five days old."

Of course it is. Why wouldn't it be?

The wind, at that point, had really picked up, and once, when I'd scrambled up a particularly steep hill, it actually BLEW ME BACK DOWN AGAIN. That, I have to say, is very disheartening at mile 29. Almost as disheartening as finally finishing, only to discover I was the second-to-the-last runner. Second to the last. The athletic equivalent of riding the short bus to school.

I looked at my husband in disbelief. I have race medals at home. Lots of them. Some of them gold. How? What? Argh!

"Well, honey," he said. "This was your first ultra. You finished. That's what's important."

I'm pretty sure I scowled at him. It's possible there was hissing, and by the time we got back in the car, I was outlining a training program for my next race, complete with speed runs...Shadow of the Giants 50K, here I come.