Tales from the Trails

Ten days before the Kentucky Derby Marathon, I decided I was going to accept a bib transfer and see what I could do. I've been running consistently since the ultra, putting in weekly long runs from a maintenance standpoint.It would be my 7th official marathon (6th on the road). My training plan called for a lighter 6-8 weeks between Land Between the Lakes and starting official training for the 50-miler in early May. In this time, I had added strength training twice a week and more focus on speedwork on the roads to solidify a stronger base as I head into the higher mileage weeks for 50-miler training. Most of my long runs had been on trails - mostly the challenging trails with lots of elevation change out at Jefferson Memorial Forest. I had no idea what I would be capable of on the road for 26.2 miles, and I was excited and worried to find out. I set a stretch goal of running a 4:30 marathon, but thought I was definitely capable of a 4:40, or at the very least a personal record...

Ragnar Trail is always tons of fun, but it's hard to describe it to someone that's never done it. It's a relay so you have a team of 8 people, put together by a captain. It's village based, so each run is a loop and starts and ends at the same place. Each team member runs each of the three trails once, for a total of 24 separate legs for the team. They are labeled the colors of a stoplight (green for easy, yellow for intermediate, and red for hard/challenging). When each runner finishes a loop, they take off the bib and hand it to the next runner, who runs the next loop. They are run in order of green, yellow, red and you assign your runners prior to arriving onsite.(Below photo shows an example of that.) Leg scheduling This year's event was great fun to plan. At first I was just coordinating a team like last year, but then not everyone was available and soon I found myself being part of coordinating 7 teams, plus an 8th team set up by another friend. We ...

After getting pneumonia in October 2016, I had to sit out the race I had spent the last 6+ months training for. It was a 50k in the Red River Gorge in KY, and it was to be my first ultra marathon. Luckily I had run my fall "A" race in September - the Moose Mountain Marathon in Northern MN - and everything about that day had been amazing and perfect. I was devastated to be so sick I couldn't run my first ultra. But I was so sick I hardly even noticed what I was about to miss out on. I was also very worried about and devastated for my friend Jeanette, who had been diagnosed with a rare salivary gland cancer the week before our MN race. Jeanette would be having a second surgery a few days before the 50k, and so both of us were focused on getting well and taking care of ourselves (and each other, a bit). I finally tried running again around Thanksgiving, but took it slowly and struggled to get my mojo back and find motivation to increase mileage again. Jeanette found out ...