“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…
Tag: ultra marathon
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,…
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…
DNF
DNF – Those pesky letters in that order that runners hate. They stand for Did Not Finish and that is a runner’s worst nightmare. So how come my first DNF didn’t hurt. It didn’t fill me with anger, hate and frustration. Instead it was… easy. I sat with Andrew and Will in the sun on a picnic table watching…
Lazy train
I’ve been “training” since January. I say “training” with quotation marks because this time around training has been different. I’ve never known training like this and I’m a little conflicted about it. It’s safe to say that most athletes know that training for any long distance event is a delicate balance of training and recovery, in fact it’s fair to…
The ultra life chose me
I didn’t choose the ultra life, the ultra life chose me. This cannot be more accurate. I haven’t run an ultra marathon since LAST October. It seems like so long ago, but in reality it wasn’t that long, time goes way to fast. When I fell into running, I didn’t plan to become an ultra runner, it…
Door County Fall 50
The Fall 50 is a 50 mile adventure that begins at the northernmost tip of Wisconsin’s peninsula and travels through scenic back roads and little towns on the Western shoreline and finishes up in Sturgeon Bay. Runners have the option to run all 50 miles solo, in pairs, or as a 5 person relay. I signed up last year after…
Ice Age Trail 50 – 2015
“Two more up and downs and we’re there!” I said to Dean, but mostly I was telling myself. I picked Dean up around mile 32 after a tough climb out to Emma Carlin. I couldn’t run downhills anymore. “It doesn’t even matter anymore,” he replied. But it did. After the roller coaster day I had and the pain…