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Cooling his jets isn't an option

Mix-up puts scare into flight plans for marathon man

Pat Rooney, Special to the News

Published July 1, 2006 at midnight

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As if Dane Rauschenberg's challenge was not difficult enough.

Rauschenberg, who is trying to run 52 marathons in 52 weeks, is supposed to reach the halfway point of his endeavor today at the Leadville Marathon. He is on track to knock off marathon No. 26 today, but it won't be without some extra challenges.

And that's not counting the 13,000-foot altitude he will encounter.

The shuttle service Rauschenberg uses to take him from his Arlington, Va., home to the airport for each of his races, a company that also serves as one of his sponsors, failed to pick him up Thursday, forcing him to miss his scheduled flight to Denver.

"It is unbelievably inexcusable, especially given that they are one of my sponsors," Rauschenberg said. "At any given point they should have called and said they were running late or couldn't make it. I could've gotten a cab. It's three miles to the airport. I would've run it."

Briefly, Rauschenberg thought his dream was over. But then his dogged determination took over. He said he woke up every hour Thursday night to see if any seats had opened on the booked fights to Denver.

Finally, about 7 a.m. Friday, Rauschenberg found a place on a flight out of Baltimore and shelled out $850 for a one-way ticket.

He was scheduled to arrive in Denver about 8 p.m. Friday and make his way to Leadville from there. That left only a few hours for sleep and little opportunity for his body to get acclimated to the altitude.

"I've had to deal with a few crazy things this year alone," Rau- schenberg said. "I did one on two hours sleep. And I'm still not convinced Leadville will be as hard as the one I did in Delaware. I know that sounds laughable, but there was a flood and we went across a waist-deep stream four times. I've handled adverse conditions. I can handle this."