Originally published in Ultrarunning Magazine, January/February 2003 I hear the tires screech as I take a corner too fast.  It’s 6:00 a.m., and the race starts at 6:15.  We’re going to be late again. This is a hare-brained, last-minute idea for both of us—Pam is running the marathon without having trained for it, and I am running my first 50 mile because I couldn’t find the 50 km I wanted to start with instead.  I really haven’t trained enough either. The thing about me and Pam is that we can’t be on time for anything.  It’s not an individual problem—it’s just when we’re together, and particularly when we’re going to a race.  We usually leave in plenty of time, but then we get lost.  So, we take our usual wrong turn, then drive 80 miles an hour to pull into the Doyon Elementary School in Ipswich, MA at 6:05.  We…