Iowa’s Governor and the governor of Arkansas were runningmates this weekend.Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack ran in a marathon Sunday in Little Rock with Arkansas Governor Mick Huckabee. Huckabee has lost one-hundred pounds and when he announced he’s be running in his first marathon, Vilsack told him he’d run in the same race. President Bush quizzed the two men about the race when the governors met this past week in Washington. “When the President became aware of the fact that we were running, he wanted to know which one of us was the tortoise (and which was) the hare,” Vilsack says. “Governor Huckabee was very quick in responding that he was the hare. Looking at him, looking at me, I figured that we were both tortoises, and that’s what I said, that we were both tortoises.” Vilsack says Huckabee’s weight loss is an inspiration and focused attention on the problem of obesity. Vilsack has a running battle with his weight, and has slimmed down after training for and running his first marathon last October in Des Moines. Vilsack intends to keep running marathons. Huckabee has said Sunday’s Little Rock marathon was actually two marathons for him: his first and his last. Vilsack would like to run two marathons a year so that by the time his term as governor expires in January, 2007, he will have run all the marathons held in Iowa. Vilsack says he likes running marathons because he likes the challenge. “You know, not everybody’s done it,” Vilsack says. “You know, I’ve been fortunate in my life to receive awards and plaques and that type of stuff and I hardly display very many of them, but every morning when I wake up one of the the first things that I see is that marathon medal and it’s a personal thing and it means a lot to me.” It is unlikely the two governors who ran in Sunday’s race will ever be political runningmates. Vilsack’s a democrat; Huckabee’s a republican.
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