Can Palin outrun Obama

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is confident Barack Obama can be beaten — in a long distance run.

The former Republican vice presidential candidate told Runner’s World Magazine if it came down to a foot race between the two famous politicians, she’d likely come out on top.

“I betcha I’d have more endurance,” Palin said in an interview published on the magazine’s Web site Tuesday. “My one claim to fame in my own little internal running circle is a sub-four marathon. It wasn’t necessarily a good running time, but it proves I have the endurance within me to at least gut it out and that is something.

“If you ever talk to my old coaches they’d tell you, too,” she continued. “What I lacked in physical strength or skill I made up for in determination and endurance. So if [it] were a long race that required a lot of endurance I’d win.”

The avid runner also revealed an accident she had only days before the vice presidential debate last fall, when she fell on a trail while jogging at Sen. John McCain’s Arizona ranch.

“I was so stinkin’ embarrassed that a golf cart full of Secret Service guys had to pull up beside me,” she said of the fall. “My hands just got torn up and I was dripping blood. In the debate you could see a big fat ugly Band-Aid on my right hand.”

Declaring “sweat is my sanity,” Palin also said some of her worst days on the campaign trail were those when McCain staffers did not schedule time for her to run.

“I feel so crappy if I go more than a few days without running. I have to run,” she said. “A great frustration I had during the campaign was when the McCain staff wouldn’t carve out time for me to go for a run. The days never went as well if I couldn’t get out there and sweat.”

And the bands that keep her going on the long runs? Palin said she kicks off with “old Van Halen and AC/DC” before going into country and ending with “mellow Amy Grant songs.”

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