“How can I do 30 MORE miles on these feet?” Every step I took felt like stepping on glass in bare feet and it wasn’t just one foot. It was both. Hot, stabbing pain in the balls of both feet. I knew I couldn’t change my gait too much, especially since I had 30 miles to go. What muscle would…
The Year That Nothing Went Right, But Then It Did.
When I look back at my running for the year of 2019, I could easily say that NOTHING went right. In fact, 2019 was the year that I wasn’t able to complete any of my intended races. It was also the first year that I didn’t run a marathon or ultra marathon. My farthest distance in one run was 18…
4 Great Books (and some honorable mentions) to Read if You Love Trail Adventures..
Four Great Books (and some honorable mentions) to Read if You Love Trail Adventures Listening to audio books on my 45-minute commute to and from work started as a way to stave off boredom. I quickly began to consume book after book at an alarming rate. Which was only alarming because my I was running out of audio books that…
Recovery and Balance
It’s been 14 weeks. 14 weeks ago I ran 100 miles. I ran for 21 hours 8 minutes and 26 seconds. 14 weeks later, I can run for only 10 minutes. Recovering from this 100 miler has proven to be even more difficult than actually running the darn thing. What still shocks me, is the fact that I felt…
100 miles to feel alive – Tunnel Hill 100
On November 10th, 2018 I spent much of the day with a smile on my face. The weather was cold, much colder than a normal early November weekend, even for Illinois. As a Wisconsin girl, the cold didn’t scare me. The number of miles didn’t scare me and the amount of time I’d be running didn’t scare me. In fact,…
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Ultra Runing
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and ultra running: How I used CBT to run 100 miles. I bet you’d never think that therapy for my depression would help me travel 100 miles on foot, but it did, in the most amazing way. If you’ve run any sort of running race you know that a HUGE chunk of it is mental. If…
Titletown Ultra Series – 8 hours in the furnace
So I haven’t been writing. Imagine that, this blog has always been a flurry of posts. Some month’s would be great, others not so great. Yet here I am trying again. I guess that’s something I also take into other parts of my life, like running and ultra running. Sometimes I’m not the greatest at planning and executing those plans,…
Book Club
Runners’ vocabulary is full of acronyms like DNS for “Did Not Start” and DNF for “Did Not Finish,” but when Mirna Valerio stepped up to the starting line, she needed a new one: DNQ for “Did Not Quit.” Valerio has tied on her running shoes all across the country, from the dusty back roads of central New Jersey to…
Oh 2017
Maybe it’s silly to reflect on another year gone, we should live everyday as a new day instead of falling into the same habits but we are only human right? Well, in 2017 I learned to let myself just BE human. It’s always a growth process. I’m part of a few running groups on Facebook one member thought it…
Lessons Learned
This year I’ve faced quite a bit of failure in my running life which is something I’ve never been used to. I feel like running has always come relatively easy to me, however the past few years have been quite turbulent. Maybe I should reword this, running is not easy, it never has been, but for whatever reason it has…