This blog is for Rank Strangers third outing at the Great Midwest Relay, June 8-9, 2007. Please watch this space for reports during the 24+ hours of our trot from Madison to Milwaukee to Chicago.

We will have a great run but experience tells me we won't win the race. We will likely finish 6 or 7 hours behind the winners, who will be about 2 minutes per mile faster than the Rank Strangers. We certainly have accomplished runners -- 80+ marathons, a couple of Boston Marathon-qualifiers -- but our goal is to have fun, not just to burn up the trail.

We have 4 Rank Strangers who will be running their third GMR: Mark, Art, Jeff and Eric.

Pete and Randy will be running their second GMR.

Gina, Renee, Denise, Anne, Dave and Marc are first-timers with us, though Renee and Anne have run with teams in other events.

Last year we finished 39th out of 61 teams, 6 hours and 20 minutes behind the winning team. Our time was 28 hours and 12 minutes.

In 2005 we were almost an hour slower, 29 hours and 6 minutes, and finished 42nd out of 68. (8 hours and 24 minutes out of first).

Mark will start us off in Madison at 9am on Friday, June 8 and Randy will finish at Montrose Harbor in Chicago on Sunday afternoon, June 9. Each Stranger will run three times; everyone will get a chance to run in the dark (outfitted with blinky vest and headlamp) and the weather will either be blistering hot (as it was in 2005), cold and rainy (2006) or something in between.

This is fun, honest! I can't wait!

Finally, my co-captain Mark and I want to express our appreciation to family members who allow us to take Rank Strangers away from their homes for more than a day - it is big sacrifice.