Since running through Los Angeles and Las Vegas, I am feeling divinely beautiful, entitled, gossipy, slightly famous (okay, actually, showered and mostly clean)...distinctly Hollywood.

I started the 3 AM to 9 AM shift a spoiled starlet. My first run was in Utah, through Capitol Reef National Park in Utah, where I started running a little before 6 AM. Uphill. In the dark. At altitude. Three criteria that could have easily resulted in a gloriously noisy hissy fit. I trotted along glumly for about 20 minutes, debating the merits of a hissy. A really good hissy, after all, takes a lot of energy, and lately, I really don't have much to spare.

Then the sun rose and everything changed. The sky turned rosy pink and the asphalt road to packed sand. The road crested a final hill, tipped over the edge, and unrolled in a long ribbon. One mountain range looked like a string of aristocratic noses. Another looked like a pile of leftover Parthenons (in storage, in case Zeus makes a comeback). I straightened my tiara and dove headfirst into the run, whooping like a deranged football fan as I zigged and zagged down some crazy steep switchbacks. Who needs stardom when you can run at dawn in Capitol Reef?

I finished the 3 AM to 9 AM shift a demanding diva. My team ran over Independence Pass (12,095 feet) just as the sun rose. In full diva mode, I had my minions run all the hard uphill and steep downhill, leaving me a lovely rolling ten-mile stretch to complete around mid-morning. I insisted upon being accompanied by an entourage – a cyclist, Elise, and our paramedic, Mark. Mark asked me several times if the altitude was bothering me (we were still running at around 10,000 feet). Honestly, at this point in the run, I'm so tired all the time, I hardly noticed the lack of air. Impossibly steep? Sure, I can run up that. Hot and humid? No problem, I can run in that. No air? I've run in worse. A giant shrieking eel bearing a subpoena? Bring it on.

We spent most of the run trading disgusting stories, each trying to out-gross the other. When Mark launched into his “weirdest things I've seen while on the job” stories, though, Elise and I both fell silent, defeated by modern medicine and the really wrong things that people do to themselves.

And of course, I am the Kevin Bacon of mayhem, mishap, mistake, and misery associated with the Blue Planet Run team. Only six degrees of separation lie between me and any stubbed toe, wrong turn, missing sock, or hot, evil stretch of asphalt. As an example: Rudy and I are inextricably connected. I exchanged the baton with Heiko in Berlin. Heiko is a member of Yellow Team and Rudy's teammate. Rudy suffered a groin injury while bouncing around the Gobi Desert in his team's van. Thus, I am three degrees of separation from Rudy's groin.

Wait. That didn't come out right.