A column should serve a purpose, if for nothing else, make all my readers feel cooler. From where I write this, in Oklahoma, the temp topped 102 degrees this week and if I can make you feel cooler, if only by comparison, I’ve performed a service.

             By the way, 102 degrees, outside with no shade is plenty hot. I saw a guy digging a ditch in this weather and it made me perspire, so much I turned up the AC on my car full blast.  
           
             That’s why you have to respect marathoners who would run in this kind of heat.  Marathoners who compete in August, running in 102 degree temps are crazy, right?  Then a runner who ran an ultra marathon, 135 miles, in August, has to be ultra crazy.  Wait, I’m getting there.  So a marathoner running 135 miles in August… in Death Valley, where the temperatures exceed 130 degrees --- that’s moonbat crazy.  But it is happening.  Right now. 
         
             Ultra marathoners are lining up to sacrifice their bodies on Satan’s Fun Run. 
And they don’t just try to do five marathons in five days. They run continuously. Double moonbat. The best of the best finish in 48 hours. And they pay to do this with an entry fee of $795.  Triple moonbat! And get this, you have to apply! Only the best get in the race at all.  You have to provide an application with race winning times of at least two 100 mile events.  Whole flocks of moonbats! It’s not enough you’re willing to suffer hallucinations, heat exhaustion, brain damage, kidney failure, sleep deprivation, and foot blisters the size of chipmunks, you have to prove to a committee that you’re worthy of killing yourself. You have to be like the high school student waiting at the mailbox to see if you got into Stanford… and that’s not even with a scholarship. You still have to pay full price. That’s Depends–wearing-astronaut moonbat.

           The oldest runner this year is 67 year old Arthur Webb.  Hey, don’t snicker at Arthur. He finished 10 consecutive Badwaters.  This year he cramped up at mile 17; then jumped in a pool to cool down, and then after resting, ice, and a few massages, he was on the course again – not stopping until he crossed the finish line 40 hours later.

           Okay, everything above, all the pain, your arms feeling like it’s on a bar-b-q spit and sweat running into your eyes so hot it burns them and then all the time your legs are crying out  “You could be in Vegas… by the pool… near some hotties.” No, that’s not the moonbattiest stuff.
The moonbattiest things about this whole exercise are the crewmembers along to help their runners combat the elements. This is where we again prove sports fans to be crazy… because in this case the crew members are the fans. They are the ones giving up their vacations, out in the same sweltering heat as the runners, running along to help establish a pace, icing down the runners, keeping a hydration log, checking their vitals and checking their urine. All these regular guys became field nurses for the few days of Badwater. Small irony, then, the winner turned out to be Marcos Farinozzo, a 40-year-old hospital worker from Brazil with a time of 23:39:18.   

         While reading this I hope you poured yourself a cool suds or an ice tea and enjoyed all the coolness, by comparison, I’ve brought you. Just knowing there are members of the human race willing to trudge up and down mountains with temperatures exceeding that of hell’s basement should make those few times you step out on the 100 plus days not all that bad. Now, let’s all say aaaaaahhh.