Earlier this year, Topo athletes were invited to run one of the distances at the Tahoe Rim Trail Endurance Run (TRTER), a collection of races held on the northeast side of Lake Tahoe. Topo athletes since March, Nick and I both jumped at the opportunity, Nick wanting to run a 100-mile race this summer and myself looking for a fun 50K event. Despite being out in Lake Tahoe in mid-June for Broken Arrow, a month…
I’m three days home from a whirlwind trip to Germany and Austria, and already everything feels far behind me. Part of this is because we hit the ground running (as usual) when we got home in order to get back to coaching, writing, Nick’s grad school, and our animals, and the other part is because we leave for another trip to Lake Tahoe to run the Broken Arrow Vertical K tomorrow. That will make more…
After dropping out at mile 24 last year, I had sworn I would never run the race again, but here I was, almost exactly a year later, on the start line of the Black Canyon 100K cold and excited and just a little bit scared. Two and a half weeks prior, our trip to New Zealand felt apart after a flight cancelation and, with it, my plans to run Tarawera 100K. After a night wondering…
It’s been a while since I last updated my blog, in part because blog posts aren’t where most share more personal details of their lives anymore (that’s for Instagram, right?) I’ve also spent the last five years since my previous blog post finishing a degree in writing and starting and completing another degree not in writing but that required a lot of it. Blog posts went by the wayside. I’d like to change that, thanks…
A few years ago, when I ran Rabbit Peak for the first time, I called it the most challenging run or hike I’ve ever done. At 22 miles, it’s not big compared to most ultramarathons, yet it’s incredibly challenging with roughly 8,000 feet of elevation ascent (and an equal amount of descent), technical terrain, jumping cholla cactus, and a route that is determined more by sheer cliffs than by an navigable trail. Joe and Nicole…
Photo credit: Glenn Tachiyama On the ferry ride over between Anacortes, Washington to our destination, Orcas Island, Nick replayed his whys over in his mind. I had a difficult time concealing my giddiness at a trip to Orcas–for one, I had never been but had heard of the island magic; for another, it was the Pacific Northwest and as a proud Pacific Northwesterner, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to smell coastal brine and the…
I never thought I’d be here. In fact, I promised my mom when I started dating Nick that I would never do these types of races. By “these types” of races, that meant anything over a half-marathon. I’m a trustworthy person, but I broke that promise. I ran a bunch of 50Ks, R2R2R, a gnarly 50-mile race in Santa Barbara and then this: Zion 100. I think the idea situated itself in my head after…
I can wrap this race report up quickly: altitude is not my friend. Fainting during a hot Fourth of July Parade in Aspen, Colorado. Traveling to Ecuador for the summer and staying at a hacienda at 3,600m (11,800 feet) for a week. I spent five of those seven days in bed, nursing cups of an herbal tea I was handed to help cure me of my nausea and, moreso, the depression of missing out on the chance to…
*Please note, I originally wrote this post as an assignment for my MFA in Creative Writing. See the original blog post here: http://osucascadesmfa.com This past fall, I ran my first 50-mile race. I may or may not have been influenced by the promise of “You’ll love it!” and “You’ll feel great,” both of which were a draw and an improbable, unimaginable scenario. Can you truly enjoy running 50-miles? Can you learn to enjoy squeezing plastic pockets…