TIR Saturday Morning Trash Talk

I'm almost 40 minutes into my planned hour on the elliptical machine at the Bally's in The Woodlands as I'm firmly engrossed reading this year's copy of Dave Campbell's Texas Football Magazine.

I hear this voice saying, "That isn't going to help you in March."

I look up and its 30-year-old Juliee Sparks of The Woodlands, one of Bill Dwyer's "Texian Road Warriors" for this March's Texas Independence Relay.

My response was, "Endurance. Endurance."

Juliee, who ran a 1:50:56 half marathon in Houston in January and then followed it up a month later with a 1:48:04 effort in Austin, has recently been battling some of the same piriformis issues that I have in the past and was excited about her run this morning as it was the first time that she's felt good in weeks.

As I've stated before, our battle against Bill's team, which will feature two speedsters in Kim Hager, who ran in the 2004 U.S. Olympic Trials Marathon, and Andrew Perry, who competed at the UIL Class 4A state track meet his senior year, will be fun.

I'm confident though that we'll negate their advantage over our two fastest runners - Edwin Quarles and Joltin' Joe Carey - with gains of our own at most of the other 10 spots.