Leave a wet tee-shirt or a soaked pair of shoes out in the high-country Colorado sunshine, and you can almost watch the damp get scorched into vapor.  The air is so thin, the solar radiation so intense, that anything left outside in mid-day for, say, seven hours turns into a desiccated, crumpled, arid shell.

Unless, maybe, you’re Tamara Cartwright and you’re running a dream.  Today, Tamara teamed with Dean Karnazes for Stage Five of the Gore-Tex TransRockies Run, and rather than collapse into a hyperthermic puddle at the finish, she sprinted in, slapping high-fives the whole way and, improbably, thanked everyone around her in a bubbling display of glee.

Sure, it took Karnazes and Cartwright seven-plus hours to cover the 24 miles, but few have done it with as much equanimity.   Karnazes, don’t forget, won the Badwater Ultramarathon, a scorching 135-mile sufferfest, so 24 miles on a mid-90s day doesn’t really rock his boat.  And Cartwright?  She just likes being out here.

Last year, she supported her husband, Michael, as he and a teammate competed as the Porch Dogs in the 2009 TransRockies Run.  So taken was she that she hired a coach and took up trail running herself.