speed up test cycle on rails 2.3.10

I've got a fairly big scary legacy app with no tests that I'm trying to build some tests into. My problem is that the schema's rather large, and to drop the database and reload it takes 56 seconds. to run all my tests (so far) takes 2. I'm using transactional fixtures, it runs each test without reloading the db, I don't see why I shouldn't be able to load the test environment once, build the db, then run tests over and over without needing to drop the db and rebuild? a 1 minute test cycle doesn't sound like much, but it really adds up. transactional fixtures should ensure the db doesn't get muddy ya?

Trying to figure it out, I didn't see anything that would do what I wanted, and before diving into the rake gem to try and modify the rake test task, I figured I'd ask, since i get the feeling I'm doing it wrong.

Thanks!