Cynical Dirt Doll

new blog...

2011-03-18T20:53:00.001-05:00

I can now be found at pigtailultrarunner.blogspot.com

Happy Earth Day!

2010-04-22T05:30:00.005-05:00

Anyone who either knows me in person or has read this blog knows that I am a hippy at heart.... not a "pot smoking, Birkenstock wearing, Grateful Dead listening" sort of hippy, but a " be mindful of Mother Nature, think about how your choices affect others and the world around you and DON'T LITTER DAMN IT!" sort of hippy. So of course I can't let Earth Day go by without an acknowledgement of some sort....I think is a great idea, but we shouldn't limit it to just one day of the year so I'm hearby challenging each every person who reads this to a year long challenge. Ready?

I propose that each and every one of us vows to pick up at least 5 pieces of trash on EVERY SINGLE run we do for an entire year. That's it.. it's super easy, and if we're on a group run we can challenge each and every person on that run to also pick up 5 pieces...and you see how this could spread, right? It drives me crazy to see discarded wrappers, water bottles, beer cans and cigarette butts on the trails or roads, wouldn't it be great to run on trails and not see signs of human habitation? It's just a little thing that we all can do that can make such a huge difference.

The picture I posted is from a trash clean up day the Lawrence Trail Hawks did last spring at the Clinton Lake trails, we hauled out bags and bags of trash... and have another clean up day on tap in a few weeks. Next year I would love to see that a planned clean up day is unnecessary because we've taken the litter out bit by bit all year. Will you take the challenge? Or puss out?

(and I might also be a "really, really want dreads" sort of hippy... but keep that to yourself)

Doh!

2010-04-12T21:13:00.003-05:00

So I got up bright and early on Saturday morning to meet my friends and Shawnee Mission Park and get in a recovery 10 miles but apparently I hadn't consumed quite enough coffee before leaving the house. About 10 minutes from the trail I realized that I was wearing my Crocs and had no running shoes with me... DOH! I am the queen of shoes! I probably have 15+ pairs in various states of wear strewn from one end of my house to the other.... and not a single damn pair in the car. Sigh. So I called my friends and turned around at the next exit and headed home to put multiple pairs of shoes in my car.. to live there.. permanently.

Rockin K 50 miler April 3 2010

2010-04-09T16:01:00.004-05:00

OK.... the last 6 months in a nutshell: traveled, raced, laughed, cried, ate, drank, breathed. I'm just plowing forward since there is no way that I'll be able to catch up.... so here we go!

In just 2 short years, Rockin' K has become my favorite race...it's got everything you need in an ultra..... fantastic race directors (most important), fabulous volunteers (very, very important), a beautiful course that is challenging but not totally discouraging (our reason for doing it) and a bounteous pre-race spread, post race feast and aid station fare that leave you fully satisfied (oh, hell yes). I'm not the only one who feels this way since this race fills up every year.... so actually I should be talking about how much this race sucks and please, don't sign up for it... (at least not until I have my spot!)

Last year I did the marathon distance, and if you read back, I did it all wrong.... bad attitude and way over trained. The race kicked my ass and I swore all summer long that I would NEVER, ever, even think about doing the 50 miler. Then I went to Australia and when I got back my running partners had decided that we were all going to do the 50 and drag each other through it.... I never even had a voice in this decision! Not fair! I am obedient so when registration opened I signed up for the 50. I was terrified, the marathon destroyed me and I couldn't imagine doing another loop... all winter long I dreaded this race and I told anyone who would listen that I was more scared of it then doing another 100 miler. Luckily Deb and Debbie shared my trepidation and we renewed our vows to help each other through it.

Winter training was crap and I had to scrap my plans to do Rocky Raccoon again, but luckily I had signed up for a few races in Arkansas in early spring, so even if the Kansas weather continued to be bad I could still get my miles in. The other races went well and with a super hard 50 mile finish just 3 weeks before Rockin K, I felt a bit better about it.

The usual crew (Stu, Deb, Debbie, & Julie) left KC around 2pm on Friday, it was an uneventful drive... other then extreme silliness and laughter. We hit Kanopolis State Park and immediately went to check in and pick up our packets....but most importantly we had to pick up our hugs from Stacy Sheridan.. RD extraordinaire. No KUS race is complete without a big smile and hug from Stacy... she must not have a very good nose, 'cuz I've seen her bear hugging the sweatiest, smelliest guys. Stacy had outdone herself this year, she had 2 kinds of vegan cookies at the aid stations and I got to pre sample them and pronounced them fantastic! We hung around waiting for the pre-race meeting where Phil went over in fine detail which color ribbons we follow at which point in the race... I paid very close attention after having gotten lost twice 3 weeks ago at a different race. After Phil talked there were some drawings for free stuff and lots of our friends won some cool goodies. The last drawing was for a free entry for the Heartland 50, and Stacy "innocently" drew my name...wheeee! I was going to volunteer, but it looks like I'll be running instead!

After the meeting we headed to our cabin which was a mere 5 minute drive from the start... once again Stacy was amazing and managed to procure this awesome cabin for us to use. Nick and Laurie soon arrived and we all settled into laying out clothes, packing up drop bags and filling water bottles. Lights went out early with only a minimum of shenanigans. As soon as the alarm went off I popped up and started the coffee maker... must have my coffee before I run! Food was eaten, coffee was drunk and the rotating line for the bathroom started..7 people and 1 bathroom make for some hasty visits. Stu is the master at making sure we all get out the door on time.. no one wants to incur his wrath so we were out and in cars ready to go right on time. At the start we found tons of our friends who had gotten in late the night before and it was a big mob scene of hugs and good lucks. A few more words from Phil, and we were off.

It was pretty chilly at the start but temps were supposed to be in the mid 60s for the day so I started in short sleeves and my Moeben Sleeves (tie dye!), the sleeves quickly got pulled down to become makeshift gloves. My hands were frozen! We started out in our usual pack, the Deb's, Laurie and myself with a few other friends interspersed. I ended up being in front of our pack once we hit the single track so I tried to set a comfortable pace that would see us through 2 loops. I was mildly surprised at how good I felt.... honestly I haven't had a really good race since before Leadville and I had forgotten how effortless it can feel when everything is clicking. I was in such a zone that I didn't realize that I had pulled away from the group and only Laurie was running with me. She was feeling good too so we continued our steady pace together, chatting and enjoying the views, splashing through water crossings and bitching about our frozen hands. Note: next year wear GLOVES!

It was a glorious morning, and the wind hadn't yet appeared so we felt like we were flying. Last year we had wind gusts of 40+ MPH from the start and since there is no cover on this course, you are at the mercy of whatever elements Mother Nature chooses to throw at you. When we hit the first unmanned water stop, Laurie and I walked a bit so we could eat something and the Debs, Kristen, Gary and Lee quickly caught up to us. Laurie was feeling her oats and took off soon after and I was content to let her go. With 40+ miles still to go I didn't want to blow things too early. Laurie was rockin' the marathon so she was ready to open her legs up. I spent the next 5 miles chatting up a storm. It was great to catch up with Kristen and Lee, both people I adore and hadn't gotten to run with in months and months! One of the best things about these long races is the ability to hear someones life story and still have time left over to share your own!

We hit the manned aid station as a big group where the Lawrence Trail Hawks fearless leader, Gary Henry was checking in runners. We mobilized quickly to refill bottles, grab cookies and bananas and then get the hell out. The goal is to spend less then a minute in an aid station and we've been working on that all spring. I was still feeling fantastic as we headed out on the 6 mile Big Bluff Loop..... true to it's name, there is a damn big bluff that you go up... and down and up again. Last year I kept getting blown off the trail in this section but this year was still relatively wind free so I kinda opened it up, without realizing it and dropped everyone again. We've been doing hill repeats every Tuesday night for months and months and I feel like it's really paying off... the big bluff didn't feel so big this year. I ran the Big Bluff loop by myself.. picking off other runners and passing them one by one. I kept telling myself that it was too early to run like that, but I just couldn't help it, I was feeling too good. When I came back through the aid station I grabbed a handful of Stacy's cookies and kept going.... I could see Laurie not too far in the distance and I was hoping to catch her.

I was having a great time running by myself, pondering life, the universe and the upcoming race schedule but was happy to catch Laurie at the top of a hill. The wind was starting to kick up and she pulled me along for awhile, and then at some point I lost her... I spent way too much mesmerized by my feet on the trails and I kept dropping people without meaning to. Running on my own meant I had to judge the big water crossing for myself. Last year Debbie went first to make sure I wasn't going to have to swim, but this year I had to be brave on my own! I took my pack off, held it over my head and started wading. It was a warm day but man when a cold river hits you at crotch level it is breathtaking. It felt like my lungs started to seize a bit, but luckily the water only came to bellybutton level so I never went into full cardiac arrest. A short bit of running and another deep river crossing, this time Dick Ross was on the far side snapping pictures and offering much encouragement. It's always a great mental boost to see his smiling face! For some reason I had in my head that after the water crossing it was less then a mile to the turnaround.... not so. (At least it certainly felt like longer then a mile!) Part of this section is fairly deep sand which makes running even more difficult. This was probably my hardest section, I just wanted to get to the turnaround, grab some more food and get going again, so it felt like an eternity.

As I hit the road and the last .2 of a mile to the turnaround, a guy caught up with me who was about to finish his first marathon. I had a good time encouraging him to pick up the pace and sprint up the final hill to the finish. I hit the turnaround at about 5 and a 1/2 hours, I checked in at the line, got my keys from Nick and headed right back out. I took a few minutes at my car to refill my pack with food and I headed back out... as I was refueling, Laurie sprinted past me to take 3rd place female in the marathon!! YAY Laurie! I hit the trail again for the second loop still by myself, but a few miles in, turned on my iPod for company. The wind had really picked up on the second loop, but I was still feeling pretty good and moving fairly easily. The hardest part here for me was knowing when to eat, I had gotten lazy recently about wearing a watch and had been relying on Deb to tell me when to eat and s-cap, so being by myself had me thrown off.

At about 10 miles into this loop I started getting hungry... nay, I was starving... seriously, I just might have eaten a hamburger had someone offered me one at that moment. I downed a gel, then a Cliff Mojo bar and then a packet of peanut butter and started feeling a bit better. It was also around this point that my right hamstring started to tighten up, not enough to stop me, but I could feel a slight tug with every stride. I was just praying that this wasn't where the wheels fall off. I was still passing the occasional runner, but now the pickings were few and far between. Let me also state that some guys get very cranky when they get chicked. I moved in and out of the Big Bluff aid station quickly, but not before collecting a hug from Laurie... the fabulous 3rd place female in the marathon. It's a good friend who will finish her marathon and then come back out on the course and crew for her friends! As I was heading out on the 6 mile loop, Gary mentioned that I was the 2nd place female... now, when I'm told stuff like this it's both good and bad... good- it makes me happy and gives me a bit of a boost, bad- I started looking over my shoulder as I ran. I prefer to be the hunter, not the hunted.

The rest of the race was spent battling the wind, my right hamstring that kept getting tighter and fatigue, but I remained in very good spirits and even managed to pass 4 guys in the last 8 miles... granted a few of them looked like zombies, but still. I slowed down way more then I wanted to, and maybe wearing a watch would have helped keep me pushing harder. Would have kept me eating on time too! I finished in 11:44... 2nd place female. After the race Stacy told me she was glad that 5 girls finished the 50 this year, in past years there have been as few as 1- zero girls finish! (My goal is to talk as many women as possible into doing the 50 next year so we totally smash that curse.) The Deb's finished just 15 minutes behind me to tie for 3rd place! After a few big bowls of soup, we all headed back to the cabin, where I disgraced myself by not being able to finish my beer before falling asleep. What a waste of perfectly good beer.

I'm only able to do this races thanks to the support of my fabulous husband & wonderful running partners, and even though Nick was injured he cheerfully and helpfully crewed for all of us, and Laurie came up big by helping after her race... encouragement from Angel, Kristi, Darcie and the countless others around gave much needed energy shots. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Can't wait for next year!

(thanks to Rick and Kristi Mayo for the picture)

100 mile recovery

2009-09-13T22:10:00.003-05:00

I'm thinking the best way to recover from running 100 is to spend a month traveling a foreign country and indulging in all sorts of bad things like drinking lots of beer and doing a whole lotta nothing! Erik & I are having a great time rambling all over Australia.. we're going wherever we feel and doing lots of camping and hiking. We've spent some great time with Erik's family and friends... we helped his parents celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary and got to watch a high school musical directed by one his best mates from high school.

Running has been on the backburner for the most part... although barefoot running on the beach has been pretty damn great! I'm definitely feeling the beer drinking and laziness... I think I've put on a good 8 pounds since I've been here! Whoops! I had every intention of running the Sydney Marathon on the 20th, but I think I'm going to end up giving it a miss... I'm having a hard time spending almost $200 on a marathon. Leadville was $250! As much as we're trying to just enjoy this holiday and not think about the unemployment factor, it does colour alot of our decision making. Lots of camping and cooking on the camp stove and staying only in cheap motels when it's going to rain or we need to shower. The gorgeous spring weather and the fact that we love to camp makes the spendthriftiness quite OK. We are totally lucky that Erik's sister lent us a car and camping gear so we didn't have to rent stuff.

Getting to Australia is always an adventure, but we try really hard to make things as easy as possible on ourselves.... flying Quantas is the first step. Even if it cost's a bit more, we would NEVER fly an American carrier overseas.... foreign airlines take much better care of you! We were able to get vegan meals that we fairly good and the seats just seem so much bigger... and everyone just seems so much more friendly and helpful. We left Denver and flew to LA, had a thankfully fairly short layover at LAX. That airport just sucks ass.... at least the international terminal. The only place to eat that was open was a hotdog stand, fortunately there was also a bar so we drank our dinner hunger pangs away..... sadly when we got the bill, we found that our Kirin beers were $8 a piece so then we had money pangs instead. Usually dinner is served fairly quickly after takeoff and since we get a "special" meal we get served first, so I was real ready for the plane to take off. It takes about 40 minutes for the plane to taxi over to the runway and I settled to take a short nap until dinner and then was rudely awakened by the captain announcing that someone on board had gotten ill so we were going to have to turn around. 40 minute taxi back to the gate, a nice long wait till there was an available gate and then time spent digging the ill person's luggage out, meant we were going to miss our train when we got to Sydney. We were taking the train up to Erik's sister place and there is only one a day.... it left 4 hours after our plane landed and under normal circumstances we would have had NO problem making it. Sadly for us we had bought our tickets online and there were non refundable, so we had a 17 hour flight to be cranky about wasting $150, and having to find a hotel in Sydney (more money) and missing some of the weekend celebration for his parents anniversary. The flight was smooth, but my sore muscles and achy knee from Leadville made it really hard for me to get any sleep. I kept trying to stretch my legs and get comfortable, but that's pretty rough at the best of times.

When we landed we had a little over an hour until our train left so we figured we see how fast we could do the customs/luggage thing... maybe we could still make the train! I put to good use my super fast hiking skills and we motored through the airport. When we hit customs, we handed our passports over and our visa info and since we came over on a permanent residency visa ( we still haven't decided if we're going to move) we had to give an Australian address, well the only one Erik has memorized is his parents out in Lightning Ridge, and the agent thought it was hysterical that we were going to move there... we then had to reassure him that there was no way. Lightning Ridge is an opal mining town, in the middle of nowhere. Erik grew up there and unless you are an opal miner or doing something related to that... there's nothing there. Drinking and playing the pokies is the only entertainment. It's about a 10 hour drive from Sydney, so no chance of popping into the big smoke for a fun evening either. We got through customs and thought that we still had a slight chance of making the train, but our bags were some of the very last to be unloaded. DOH! We decided to hit Central Station anyway and see if they could do anything for us or to find out if we had any other options for getting up to Moree that day.

We got a super nice Countrylink agent and she just transferred our ticket to the next day! Phew! No having to spend an extra $150!! We still had to find a cheap hotel in Sydney (hah!) but at least the tickets were sorted. Erik's sister Heidi was able to get online and find us a $100 hotel near Kings Cross and we headed that direction. Kings Cross is the redlight district so it's always a fun place to people watch. We checked in and headed off to wander the city, which is our favorite thing to do in Sydney anyway! We had a great Thai lunch and gave ourselves blisters before heading back to the hotel and crashing hard. The worst part of the trip is the awful jet lag, so we picked up some hummus and VB beer and spent the evening sitting on the porch at our hotel watching people.... staying upright lasted until about 7 pm when we couldn't fight it any longer and crashed hard. Going to bed that early means a 4 am wake up, so we got to do our favorite early morning hike around Sydney while the sun came up. Wandering around Circular Quay, which is where the Opera house and Harbour Bridge are is magical in the early morning.

To be continued!

Leadville Trail 100

2009-08-25T08:43:00.008-05:00

This whole summer my entire focus has been to run Leadville and to run it well. I received a ridiculous amount of support from my husband in pursuit of this....and a ridiculous amount of encouragement from my friends, family and running partners. I can't imagine life without these people.... and I CANNOT imagine trying to do Leadville without crew and/or pacers, hands down, there is no way I would have finished without them. The race certainly didn't go the way I had envisioned, planned or hoped for.... but I got it done.

Erik and I drove out to Colorado Springs on August 15.. a week before the race. Since the beginning of July my life has been stupidly busy. I had no idea that shutting down a business would take more time and energy then opening one! My band also had our first show just days before we left for Colorado which meant lots of extra practice and since Erik & I are leaving from Denver to fly to Australia for a month just days after Leadville, all my ducks HAD to be in a row! We spent a few days in the Springs, relaxing and adjusting to altitude, and then on Wednesday we drove to Leadville. The days leading up to the race were full of full on panic and fear mixed with strange calm mixed with dread. I tried to just concentrate on getting my stuff together and staying off my feet as much as possible.

Thursday night was packet pickup and the pasta feed and it was good to hang out with a bunch of my KC area friends. There was a whole huge herd of KC folks coming in over the next few days, runners, pacers, crew and groupies.... yes, runners have groupies! I admit to a bit of star struck, girly, squealing when I caught sight of Anton Krupicka on Friday morning at the pre-race meeting, but I wasn't the only one! Thursday night after the pasta feed, my good friends Mac and Angela called to tell me.. Surprise! They were flying in late Friday night and would be in Leadville by start time to watch me race. I almost fell on the floor....and it almost made me not want to race! I knew that everyone was going to be having such a good time hanging out at aid stations and partying, I wanted to be there with them! OK, that was probably just the nerves talking...

Friday morning was the med check and pre race meeting. Due to a helicopter crash on Mt. Massive, the race had to be re-routed a bit, and rumours had been flying about how the course was going to go. After the meeting the day seemed to crawl by in slow motion, I tried to get a nap in, but finally gave it up and started getting all my aid station food ready. I wasn't going to do drop bags since I had such a bad ass crew (5 people dedicated solely to me.. not including 2 pacers.. I felt like a rock star!) but I wanted to get everything as organized as possible so I could just grab food and go. My plan was to spend just a minute or 2 in each aid station especially in the beginning and try and bank as much time as possible. It finally got dark and I drank some chamomile tea and hit the bed.... I slept much better then I thought I would, but by 2:30 I was half awake before the alarm went off. Getting dressed, number pinned on and eating felt surreal...it sure didn't feel like the race I had prepped for all summer. I forced food down my throat, grabbed my stuff and walked the 2 blocks to the start. In front of the video store, the whole KC crowd met up and exchanged hugs, stories and good lucks.

We made our way to the start line after what seemed like a million pictures were taken by friends.. Nick and I planted ourselves kinda in the middle of the packs and waited for the shotgun blast. While standing on the start line, I realized I hadn't gone to the bathroom, but it was too late.. BOOM and we were off! It was a slow start with just over 500 runners starting, and we had time to look around and find Gary and Willie and Adam... more KC runners. We ran past a house that had Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run" blaring at top volume and probably 40 people standing out front cheering us on with beers. The morning was surprisingly warm, which did not bode well for the rest of the day. I felt good so instead of starting out slow and holding back, I would run at a comfortable but quicker pace until I started feeling like I needed to back off.

By the time I hit the first aid station at May Queen, I HAD to stop and use the bathroom on the way in.... I dropped off my long sleeve shirt and headlamp with my dad, grabbed some watermelon to eat and was off again. I caught up with Nick and we spent some time running with Anita Fromm, who holds the record for fastest DOUBLE Badwater.... she proceeded to scare the crap out of both of us by telling us that Leadville was way harder then Badwater. Not really what you need to hear at less then 20 miles into the race!! Nick and I stuck together climbing up Hagerman Pass road and then I got in front of him a bit coming down the Powerlines section... I was trying to go slow and save my quads but not so slow that I trashed them by braking too much. It's a fine line and I definitely have some serious work to do on learning how to run downhill. Maybe someday when I'm living somewhere that actually HAS long downhills, I'll learn.

When I hit the pavement on the way to Fish Hatchery, I realized how hot it was getting and how my stomach wasn't feeling real great. I was trying to think ahead to the aid station and what I might want to eat but nothing sounded good. Coming into F.H was like coming into a party, people were cheering their heads off and everyone was having a great time. I checked in and pretty much right out again and headed towards my crew... they got my water refilled and I tried to interest my stomach in some food, but a few watermelon pieces and some sips of a ginger drink where about all I wanted. I was hoping the ginger would settle things by the time I hit the next station, but I had plenty of food in my pack in case things improved quickly. I was starting to get a bit concerned about the lack of calories, once you get into a caloric deficit it can be really hard to make it up.. there is only so much food your body can process at one time.

I caught up with Nick on the way out of the aid station and we cruised along together on the road. This section pretty much sucked.. it was either wide open pavement or wide open dirt road for about 4 miles. The sun was blazing down and it seemed like an endless section. During 1 point I had to pull over and use some bushes and then a few miles later, when I got to the aid station I had to use the bathroom again.... my stomach was not very happy with me. I had a few sips of a peach/strawberry smoothie and tried some cookies but nausea had set in good. I left my crew and headed off, a short bit down the road Nick's family had set up a small aid station that was just a few yards from their house and Shane offered me some ginger chews that helped for a short bit, enough for me to get down some Hammer Gel anyway. I finally caught up with Nick again and we decided to stick together at least through Twin Lakes.

It was so very helpful to have each other to push on with. I think at this point we both did a bit of bitching and moaning, we were both having issues but quitting wasn't an option for either of us. It was absolutely breathtaking scenery and we'd look around occasionally and decide that life didn't suck. We may have been hurting, but damn... we were able to run allllll day and allllll night in the beautiful Colorado mountains, with amazing crews to tend to us and see to our every need and at the end of the race there was a red carpet to run down and a shiny new belt buckle waiting. Going into Twin Lakes there is a super steep rocky downhill and Nick warned me not to fall... I didn't but I did have a close call or two and let out a few girly squeals. Coming into all the aid stations was so much fun! The cheering crowds were amazing and everyone wanted to help right away.
I sat down for a couple of minutes at Twin Lakes for the first time and tried to come up with something to eat.. once again, a few sips of this and a few bites of that were about all I could stomach. My mom soaked my hat and bandanna in cold water and that made me feel a ton better. I hit the porta potties AGAIN on the way out. Nick and I started out together but at some point I was chattering away with some other runners and lost him. The stream crossing wasn't very high.. only about knee height on me, I was hoping for about waist high so my quads could get a nice icy immersion. I guess I could have stopped and spent some time in the river, but I had forward motion going and I didn't want to stop!! I was about 2 minutes into my climb up Hope Pass when Anton blazed past me down the hill on his way back to Leadville.... all I could do was stand aside and cheer for him.... he was running like the hounds of hell were after him, chasing course record ghosts. I succeeded in that, I wanted to at least be ON Hope Pass before I was totally passed by the leaders.. but knowing that these people were going to finish in the daylight is totally mind boggling! I have such admiration for the speedy guys and girls!

Going up Hope my nausea got worse.. I figured it was a combination of heat and altitude that was doing me in... but it seemed to be doing everyone in. I have never seen so much puke on the sides of trails before! I made some contributions and knew that I was in real trouble. If I couldn't get food in me, I didn't see how I was going to be able to finish. It was the first time that I thought about a DNF. Hope Pass is a hard ass climb, but I just put my head down and kept going up, I stopped when I needed to stop and pushed on when I could. I chatted with a bunch of people on the way up and I always stepped off the trail and gave the speedy ones plenty of room as they flew down the trail heading back to Leadville. It was a great excuse to stop and rest in addition to being able to cheer them on fully.

When I finally hit the Hopeless Aid Station, I filled up my water and took a minute to look at the gorgeous llamas up there. The aid station stuff is all packed in on llama back and those people who run it are bad ass!! It is such a help having them up there and gave me a definite lift. I grabbed a few saltine crackers in hopes of calming the guts and continued upwards. I hooked up with Josh who was a KC runner now living in Manhattan, Kansas and he really helped me get over the top and down most of the other side. He, too was having stomach issues and I offered him everything in my pack hoping he could keep something down.. but no such luck. The descent on the back side of Hope was quad and knee killing. I almost fell, I don't know how many times and the trails are so narrow that trying to get out of the way of the runners coming back up was a bit hair raising at times. Your choices are either a steep drop off on one side or such a severe side slope on the other that you'll bust an ankle trying to stand on it. I ran some bits on the descent but the constant stopping and letting people by disrupted any rhythm. By the time I hit the dirt road and had 2.5 miles to go to actually get into Winfield... I was out of water. This section was pretty miserable, the cars were stirring up so much dust that I was wearing my bandanna like a mask, I was waterless, I was totally out of energy and still puky. Those were some of longest miles I've ever been on!

I made it into Winfield and was weighed at the aid station..I was afraid I'd lost too much weight but surprisingly I was up 2 pounds. (I deliberately waited to go to the bathroom until AFTER weigh in) My crew swung into action and got me ready to make another Hope crossing... they tried everything possible to get me to eat. Coming into Winfield I told them I was in real trouble, I was totally out of energy and had to come up with something that stayed down. Luckily for me this was also the point I picked up my first pacer Debbie. She packed her bag with all sorts of things to eat and we headed off down the road with my spirits considerably lifted. We chattered away and as we headed down the road we came up Nick on his way to Winfield. He looked bad and my heart was breaking.... we gave him huge hugs and in my heart all I could do was pray for him to make it. A bit further down the road we came upon our friend Rick, now normally Rick would have been a good 20+ miles in front of me... he had kicked some butt at Western States, but today the altitude and heat got to him too. He had been resting at Hopeless Aid Station when I went through and I didn't even realize it. When he hit Winfield, he had already passed the time limit, but his weight was down so much that he would have been pulled anyway. My heart was breaking for him.
Debbie kept my spirits up and kept me moving over Hope... this was the very worst of the nausea, and it took me forever to make it back over. I kept having to stop and breathe and try and keep from puking. Debbie put up with some serious whining at this point but ignored me and kept prodding me upwards. When I hit the top of Hope again... I stopped and yelled as loud as I could "SCREW YOU HOPE!!!!" and started running down. At this point it was obvious that the majority of my problems stemmed from altitude sickness and not just heat since the quicker I dropped down in altitude the better I felt. I thought it had taken me so long to get over Hope that I would have timed out at Hopeless, but apparently I had plenty of time, so onward we went.

Originally I had planned to be at Twin Lakes again before the sun went down, but luckily my crew knew that there was no way I would make it, and stuck my headlamp in my pack. On the way down, we kept blinding baby mice on the side of the trail and they would get confused and try and run under our feet, so we had be careful so we didn't squish any of the little things. When we hit the water crossing, I sent Debbie ahead to tell my crew to make up some oatmeal, since finally something was sounding good to eat!!! At about this point Nick and his pacer Ben Reeves came up behind me and I have never been so darn happy to see someone in my life! Nick has this amazing ability to come back from the dead and keep running! Ben kept us moving
into the aid station where I peeled off to the bathrooms again....(you can skip this next section if you don't want to hear my poop musings ) I was constantly amazed at the amount of crap I was producing... I had hardly eaten all day but stuff was coming out of me from both ends like I had been hoggin' at Country Buffet all day. It amazed me that I was still able to move forward at any sort of speed given the fact that I probably hadn't even consumed 2,000 calories over the entire day and most of those had come out of me in one form or the other.

I grabbed my oatmeal from my crew and quickly checked in and out of Twin Lakes aid station, after which I could take a minute to stand around eating it... it was hot and tasted pretty good, I also downed a few watermelon pieces. Debbie and I were off again into the night. I had forgotten how much climbing was in this section and I was back to moving VERY slowly. At this point I started getting very, very sleepy, and found myself dozing off and stumbling all over the trail. I kept begging Debbie to just let me lay down and sleep for 5 minutes, but all she would give me was 2. So I did that a few times until Nick and his pacer Shane came by us like a freight train but stopped long enough to ply us with caffeine pills. Debbie had the sleepiees too, so she took one a tried to keep me moving. I feel awful about this part of the race.. I was exhausted, crabby, and mentally I couldn't imagine climbing up powerlines again. I told myself at this point that I was quitting when I saw my crew again. All I wanted to do was crawl in a warm sleeping bag and sleep for a few days. I started voicing these thoughts to Debbie, but she didn't want to
hear them. She really took the brunt of my absolute depths of despair and kept me moving.

When we got into the Box Creek Aid Station, mentally I was telling myself that I only had 3.5 miles to go and I would quit when I saw my crew. I was sitting in a chair with my head in my hands and the uber helpful volunteers at Box Creek were trying so very hard to help me out. Finally I took a few handfuls of watermelon and some sips of coffee and we were off. I started to enjoy myself a tiny bit at this point because mentally I was checked out of the race. I made Debbie turn off her headlamp so we could enjoy the AMAZING array of stars. It was a gorgeous night and instead of plodding along with my head down, I started looking up. When we finally hit the road where the crews were waiting I told them I was done. I couldn't officially drop out there because it wasn't a true aid station but I wanted a ride to Fish Hatchery where they could snip my med bracelet and I could go to sleep. Unfortunately for my plans, my crew was having none of this. They told me I was going to have to get to F.H on my own 2 feet. I cried at my husband, and whined at anyone that would listen.. but they weren't actually listening.

So I found myself once again heading down the road to Leadville and I felt kinda confused as to how they bamboozled me into 4 more miles. I walked this entire stretch of road, there was no attempt at running, but I have a pretty mean power hike so we were actually moving fairly quickly. I kept turning down food from Debbie and telling her, that I didn't need it since I was dropping out in 4 miles. I spent half the time trying to justify it to her and myself, I kept telling myself that it was amazing I had gotten as far as I had on so few calories and it was impressive that I had continued on being as sick as I was. I was almost able to make myself feel good about dropping out. We hooked up with a group of guys a few miles from F.H and they kept us entertained, but my mind was still made up.

When I got into F.H, my crew descended on me and hustled me to check in and then out since I was so very close to the cut off. I kept saying it didn't matter, but they said I wasn't allowed to make any decisions until I had had some soup. So I ate a cup of some amazing vegan broth and the next thing I knew I was changing into tights and putting on new socks (my feet had some yucky blisters). This was where I was dropping off poor, beleaguered Debbie and picking up Christy (who was quickly being briefed about my mental state by Debbie). My mom made me eat a spoonful of peanut butter over my protests that I was not going on, I almost puked it all up again but I managed to keep most of it down. I stood in the middle of this group of wonderful people, whining my head off about not wanting to do powerlines but they just ignored me, and kept telling me to move on out. At this point my dad gave me a huge hug, and told me that I had his strength and had to finish... we both got all teary and that was it. A switch had flipped in my head and I was going to finish this damn race. As Christy and I moved down the road, I kept quizzing her to make sure we had enough time... I didn't want to do powerlines only to be timed out at May Queen. She assured me we could do it so off we went.

When I was in Leadville in June, I remembered the climb up powerlines as being super steep and I was thinking it was going to be like Hope Pass, but my thinking was faulty and I think that broth was magic, becuase it felt like we flew up that section. I'm not entirely sure how many people we passed going up (powerhiking) but it was quite a few. Christy just kept pointing out glow sticks so I was concentrating on passing those instead of going up hill and the next thing I knew, we were going down Hagerman Pass. Christy kept telling me stories and making me talk and we kept passing people on our way down. At one point we came upon a guy who was NOT doing well, he had a pacer with him and they asked us to send help when we got to May Queen. We picked up the pace a bit more and a mile or so down the road a Search and Rescue truck was on it's way up the hill, so we flagged him down, gave him the guys number and crossed our fingers that it wasn't anything serious. When we finally got off the hill and onto the trail again, my memory started to go, I had thought the trail section was much shorter then it was and I started getting SUPER cranky when the trail just kept on and on and on. I snapped at Christy a few times and got a bit hysterical that I wasn't going to make the time cut off. But finally we hit the paved section and got to the aid station in time.

Another cup of broth and another stop at the porta johns and I told my crew that I would see them at the finish line. Christy told me I was going to have to make up some serious time going around the lake since I was only 4 minutes ahead of the cut off, so I put my headphones on and we ran, from ribbon to ribbon, and powerhiked the hills. When we hit the Tabor Boat Ramp and found out we only had 7 more miles to go and almost 3 hours to do it in, I knew short of disaster, that I was good. I settled down into my powerhike since running was making my blisters scream in excruciating pain. Once we got off the trail around the lake and onto the dirt road I felt like I was homefree, but I didn't realize just how long this stretch was and once again started to get super cranky and panicky when it just continued on and on. My bits of running here were nothing more then a shuffle punctuated with me grunting in pain. Christy offered me an advil and I gratefully accepted... I should have grabbed a few more from her, but advil can be so very bad for your kidneys during long races so I had kept myself to taking a total of 4 over the 30 hours. Finally, after what seemed like lifetimes long, we could see town. Spectators kept saying.. it's not far.. and I had to restrain myself to keep from screaming.. How far is not fucking far?????? I was at the height of my crankiness and poor Christy finally just dropped behind me a bit, (she would have had every right to just push me off the nearest cliff!) When we hit the pavement, it was like I was a new person... and I could see the finish and hear Christy sobbing behind me. She gave me a huge hug and Dad came out and met me a bit less then a mile from the finish and ran me the rest of the way in. Scattered along the way were my KC friends and they cheered me on in. All I had eyes for was that red carpet and finish line banner, and then finally I was running down it and into the arms of my crew. 29:48:07.

There was much hugging and crying and then Merrilee put my medal around my neck with a big hug and then I was swept off to the med tent and weighed in. I was up 3 pounds and by the amount of swelling I had going on in my hands, face and feet, I was surprised it wasn't more. I grabbed a few pieces of watermelon, found my crew and sat my butt on the grass. I guess everyone had been freaking out thinking I wasn't going to make the time cut off, but I knew I was. Christy and I had been keeping such a close watch on things, and since my legs weren't totally shot, if I had to run fast.... I would have. My feet would have been hamburger but I could have done it. Just a short 12 minutes later we heard the shotgun blast to announce the end of the race and my heart ached for those people still coming down the hill. Not an official finish.. but they finished in my eyes.

I really tested my crew and pacers at this race and I'm honestly shocked they are still talking to me much less willing to hug me afterwards! There is no way I could ever repay them or make it up to them, I would absolutely have NOT finished this race without them.

My husband Erik is an absolute angel, he kept urging me on even when he knew how badly I wanted to quit. He spent 30+ hours driving around, trying to get me to eat and giving me support. I won't ever be able to repay him. My parents were amazing... my mom thought she had retired the crew chief hat, but gladly took it out again when I asked. She is truly a selfless woman. My dad.. who inspired me to keep going and kept telling me I could do it. Mac and Angela, who flew in for a super quick weekend, and would not take QUIT for an answer. Apparently I had told them not to let me quit, and they were bound and determined not to let me. All the other KC folks, Laurie, Stacy, Kyle, Caleb, Shane, Ben R, the Lang family, Julie, Ireland Dave, Angel, Tony, Rick, Josh, Gary, Willie, Adam, Darin, British Mark, David, Stu and Deb, all the encouragement, hugs and advice you gave were oh-so-very helpful. I stole bits and pieces of your energy and it helped get me through. Nick, my friend who I can't seem to run a race without.. thanks for all the support... as always it was a pleasure to run with you... next year though, I'm gonna kick your ass ;) ! Finally, Christy and Debbie... my pacers extraordinaire, once again I couldn't have done it without you. I'll never be able to repay you guys this one... you truly saw the absolute worst of me, but continued on with me anyway. Thank you from the bottom of my heart..... I owe you beyond words.
Ultrarunning is such a selfish sport, but somehow this selfish runner managed to find an amazing group of family and friends (who ARE family) who are completely selfless and loving. I am blessed beyond words.

Better to burn out then fade away

2009-08-05T07:43:00.000-05:00

(My race report for the PCT 50 is almost done and it's coming soon.. I promise!)

Sunday night was the final day my record store was open, and over the past month since we announced that we were closing we have been overwhelmed by the amount of love our customers/friends have for us. The store has been constantly busy and everyone has stopped by to tell us how much we meant to them. It's been very gratifying to hear that we will be missed and how much we figured into peoples lives. I wasn't sure how the last day was going to go, but I was certain that I was going to be a crying, sobbing mess. We planned a private party after we closed for some of our customers that truly kept us in business over the 6 years we were open... the type of customers that were in weekly and spent half their paychecks with us. My friend Cat even came up from Texas for the last day... she had been there for the very first day so she decided that she had to be around for the last also. We invited some of the kids who had grown up in the store.. they went from riding their bikes over to browse the racks to being able to drink with us in the time we were open. I was looking forward to drinking some beer with some really good people to end things on a happy note.

The official store closing time was 6pm, and then the party was scheduled to start at 6:30, but sometimes the universe takes the best laid plans and turns them upside down. At 5:30 we still had a good 30 people in the store, grabbing the last minute deals. At 5:50, there was a huge explosion and all the power went out... a second later the lights flickered and went back on for a split second and then another huge explosion and power was back off again. People were screaming and hitting the floor.... it was a bit unnerving to look outside and see huge showers of sparks raining from all the power poles up and down the street. It was apparent after a few minutes that it was going to be awhile until things went back on... unfortunately, no power meant no computer, no lights, no a/c, and most importantly for us.. no credit card machine! We could do paper receipts and use cell phone calculators but the no credit card thing was NOT good.

Everyone was awesome and just said they'd run to the closest ATM... but since a couple mile radius was affected by the outage, the closest ATM was a good 4 miles away. We swung into action hand writing receipts and Cat was the cell phone calculator wizard... it was pretty damn stressful and with no a/c it was getting pretty darn hot too! Meanwhile, because it was taking so long for everyone to find ATM's and us to write up sales, our party folks were arriving and adding to the confusion. We explained the situation to a few people and asked them to keep the party folks outside until we could get the "regular" customers taken care of and out the door. As soon as the last customer was out the door, the beer cooler came out of the back room and I broke into one.... we all needed it! The original plan was to order pizzas from next door and luckily for us, the ovens are gas and they agreed to make us up a bunch of 'za by flashlight before they closed.... they couldn't even ring us up!

Thankfully everyone took the problem in stride and had a great time hanging out, drinking much beer and shopping by flashlight.... a few of our emergency battery backup lights were on for a few hours but soon even they went out. It was great to spend some time thanking some wonderful people for all they did for us over the years. And because of the chaos and stress of the evening, I didn't even cry as much as I thought I would!! We kept trying to bribe the guys fixing the power by offering beer and pizza, but they were having some major problems. By the end of the evening there was 4 trucks of guys working on the power and they were yelling and fighting amongst themselves. Yikes! When it got fully dark, the party broke up and most everyone took off.. a few of us hung out and talked by candlelight until 11:30 but finally it was time to go. Thankfully the wonderful husband was driving because as soon as I got into the car, I started crying and didn't stop until we got home 20 minutes later. The store had a great run and I'm not sorry we're choosing to close it, but I will truly miss seeing some wonderful people on a weekly/daily basis. It was time to go.. and the universe helped us "burn out" instead of fading away on Sunday.

2009-07-19T19:56:00.002-05:00

Running in the mid-west in the summer, frankly, sucks ass. The temperatures during the day range from the upper 80's through the low 100's and when you add humidity on top of that... YUCK. The nights aren't any better.. temps don't usually get lower then the mid 80's. So keeping motivated during the hot summer days can be difficult. A week ago, I started my run at 6:30 am, it was already in the mid 80's and rising quickly, the humidity was high enough that within 5 minutes of starting my run, I was literally drenched. To compound things, the bugs are ridiculous right now, so I'm covered in sticky sweat and bugs are landing on me and becoming glued to my skin.... and then I start hitting the spiderwebs. I know spiders are smart critters, but when they build huge webs right down the middle of the trail, I have to question their smarts. I grab a long branch and run, wielding my web stick knocking down huge webs and HUGE spiders as I trot along. Usually I try not to disturb nature while I run, but I have no choice in these instances... build the web on the side of the trail and no one gets "bugged", down the middle and you're gonna be rebuilding that thing over and over again.
At the start of the summer, the webs and spiders are small and you can just run right through them without a second thought, by the time August rolls around, these suckers are the size of your fist and the webs are so strong that I've literally bounced off them before. I guess, what I'm trying to say here is that running hasn't been as fun as usual here. I'm really looking forward to running in some other places (Portland, Colorado & Australia) and really looking forward to fall running. I'm craving running through that crisp, cool fall air.

Originally I was going out to The Mt Hood/PCT 50 miler to crew and pace for my friend Christy, but then another friend was not able to use her entry so now I'm just going to run the whole thing with Christy. We train together quite a bit and though my pace is a bit faster then hers, we're still able to make things work... for instance during the PCT race, I will run the whole thing at her speed, both to give her companionship during her first 50 miler and to keep me from running too fast a race just one month before Leadville. Then during Leadville she will pace me in the later miles when I'm moving much slower. Even with the nasty heat and spiderwebs, training has been going well, I've been lifting 4 days a week, doing hill repeats once a week, and the rest of the time trying to get in as much mileage as possible....I hope PCT feels good and goes well, since I'm pretty much out of time. Not a whole lot left to do to prepare for Leadville now but pray and try not to dwell on it!

I bought a new (to me) car as part of my L-ville prep... I've been wanting a Honda Element for awhile and hitting a deer in my bug meant I needed something new. I'm pretty excited for all the room for gear and ease of cleaning and space for my crew (my husband) to stretch out and take a nap while waiting for me. It also means that my Great Dane Otis doesn't have to fold up like origami in the back the bug... it's a win-win situation for everyone!

All Things Must Pass

2009-07-02T14:38:00.004-05:00

This post has bugger all to do with running.. so if that's all you're here for you can skip this post and I won't be offended!
For the past 6 years, my entire life has been taken up with owning a record store with my husband. In the beginning owning Needmore Discs was definitely a 24-7 job, but then as we got things running, it smoothed out and we were able to relax.. kinda.. I don't think any small business owner ever REALLY relaxes! We were able to pay off the business in the first 2 years of operation thanks to our uber-loyal client base... and things were fun. On a busy Saturday we could have a store wide conversation going amongst complete strangers..maybe over which was the best Beatles album, or maybe the differences in LP sound vs. CD sound. We did midnight sales for big new releases and sponsored a weekly show called "Boozeday Tuesday " at a local bar which all sorts of great local bands played at, we donated money and gift certificates to local high schools, and bands and whatever worthy causes we could.
But then slowly, slowly things started changing, customers who always swore they'd never download started coming in less frequently and when they did they sheepishly admitted, "yeah, I got an iPod". More and more people started bringing in their entire collections of CD's to sell, telling us "I'm going all digital". Then the record labels got into the action.. suddenly all these big artists started releasing CD's exclusively through W*lmart or T*rget or B*st Buy, or just making it available for download only.... we just got more frustrated and hurt too. The independent record store has been the cornerstone of music since the first LP's but it seems everyone has forgotten that... or just doesn't care anymore. And honestly I'm not blaming anyone, it's so very convenient to pick up a CD along with your new shirt or toilet paper.... or with 1 click, download it right to the computer or order it online to be delivered in just a few days, instead of driving across town to a separate store.
For the first time ever, we didn't have the new generation walking in the doors all wide eyed and excited. It was always so very much fun to see the kids discovering "new" music.. watching their tastes progress, and getting to turn them on to obscure bands and have them turn us on to new bands too. We watched them grow up, start driving, go to college, and come back and visit us over vacation... but then it stopped. The 13 year olds were downloading.. they didn't give a shit about CD's, most of them had never even owned one. Nothing wrong with that, but it makes me sad... I love browsing book store, music stores, junk stores... I can't imagine growing up not having done that my whole life. Walking into a dark, stuffed to the gills, musty smelling record store or book store for the first time, not knowing what sort of treasures you might find is like Christmas, Halloween and my birthday all rolled up into one.
When it came time to renew our lease, Erik & I looked at each other and just decided that we didn't have the heart to do it anymore. It stopped being fun a few years ago, and with the economy tanking it was getting close to being not economically viable anymore either. We decided to jump before we were pushed. August 2 is our last day of business. After we close up and pack up whatever is left we're going to spend a few weeks in Colorado and then after I run the Leadville 100, we're hopping a plane for Australia for a month. Time to regroup, renew and decide what the heck we're going to do. I don't want anyone to walk away from this post thinking we're bitter, because honestly we're not. Both sad and excited, but not bitter.... just wishing things were different. I'm going to miss the hell out of a lot of my customers.. there are people I have seen every week for 10 years now.. they have become family and I'm going to truly miss them.

(reading back over this post, I sound really old and mildly bitter...next thing you know I'll be yelling at kids to get off my lawn!!)

Listen to the Minus 5 "Down with Wilco" CD (or download it, you philestines) while reading this post.. somehow it fits it perfectly.

Colorado trip part 2

2009-06-29T11:14:00.000-05:00

continued from previous post.....
(I meant to get this post done over the weekend but between At&T and their cruddy DSL service and following along with Western States online, I got nothing done!!)

Saturday I got up early and headed out for an exploratory Salida run. From my bedroom window I could see this big hill with a winding dirt road spiraling up it ... oddly enough it was called "Spiral Dr." Go figure! I headed toward it and found a nice runnable dirt road with a steady but not leg breaking climb, at the very tiptop of the hill there is a weather station and little hut, I spent some time at the top taking pictures and video and visually scouting out the BLM lands to the east of Salida.

I saw some interesting trails so headed down the hill... as I was heading down I passed a ton of people on bikes and foot on their way up... I guess I was the early bird! I headed off onto the trails and ran around for about 12 miles, but I hadn't brought enough water with me for any further explorations. It was just wonderful to be under the bright sun and Colorado blue sky. The skies in Colorado are such a particular shade of blue, when I first moved to KC I would wake up crying with homesickness after dreaming of that shade of blue. The trails were nicely groomed, rolling hills, with great views. I knew which mountain I was staying near so I didn't have to worry about getting lost, when I was ready to head back I just jumped on a trail that headed in the direction of that mountain! Can't do that on the prairie! After lunch Mac, Angela and I drove up to Cottonwood Pass and hiked up there for awhile... it was quite chilly but good for some altitude adjustment. Cottonwood Pass is amazingly gorgeous... it's right on the Continental Divide and the snow capped mountains all around & elevation of 12,126 make it quite breathtaking... literally and figuratively!

Sunday I spent in Salida again exploring trails and getting lost... at one point I was running up a canyon and in the middle of a section of smooth sandy trail, I came a bone... nothing else around it.. just a fairly good sized bone. Animal? Human? Who knows, but I decided to pick up my pace a bit and hope that some mountain lion wasn't going to jump on my back. I spent about 4 hours on the trails but headed back when the heavy clouds started to gather and the lightning got pretty close. We spent the evening getting our camping gear together and early the next morning we headed for Leadville. We all squished in the 4-wheel drive truck, it was a bit uncomfortable on the drive up, but worth it when we got to Winfield and got a camping spot up the 4 wheel drive road. We got camp set up and then went for a gorgeous hike. We drove into Leadville to pick up a few things that afternoon, and I started feeling a little odd. It was the first time all trip that the altitude actually seemed to affect me. My head hurt, stomach was a bit queasy and I felt a touch dizzy. I drank a bunch of water and ate lunch, which seemed to help quite a bit. I kept a journal of how the altitude was affecting me from day to day so hopefully I can figure out the optimal time frame to head to Colorado in August, and other than the first day this was the first "significant" problem. That night I slept pretty good, even though it was pretty cold.. I'm guessing somewhere in the 30's. I ended up with some really crazy, vivid dreams of mountains falling on me.
Got up early the next morning, and had butterflies... it was Hope Pass day. I didn't know what to expect, since everyone talks about Hope with a combination of respect/horror and dread. I knew that I wasn't going to get the "real" experience 'cuz I wasn't going to run 50 miles first, but I wanted to go home knowing that I could get my ass over the pass. I filled up the biggest waterpackI had (100 oz) and took plenty of warm clothes..I didn't know how long it would take me, if there was anywhere to get water or how the weather was going to behave, so I had to be prepared. I figured carrying the extra weight on my back was good training. I had some Lara Bars, Raw Revolution bars and some homemade gu in the pack, but I forgot to grab the bean and rice burritos I made up. Doh! I told my friends that if I wasn't back in 10 hours.. to call out the Calvary. Of course, HOW they were going to do that, I had no idea since none of us had cell reception and neither of them knew how to drive a stick shift!! I wasn't really worried but it was something to think about.
I had my map and directions from the race packet and set off running down the dirt road to Sheep Gulch where I hopped on the trail. It immediately goes up... and up.. and up. NO switchbacks! I literally stopped and laughed a few times (in between gasps of breath) because I was on my toes the whole time, it was too steep for my heels to hit the ground. Needless to say I was NOT running! I kept as fast of a pace as I could manage, but had to stop and take pictures and gasp for air occasionally. (I uploaded a ton of pictures to my Flickr account.. the link is on the sidebar). I hit the top of Hope in about 1:49.. one of the slowest 5 miles I've "run"! When I got to the top it was super windy and cold but I took the time to enjoy the views, knowing that I probably wasn't going to be looking around much in August! As I started to descend the other side towards Twin Lakes.. a big black dog appeared out of nowhere at the top of the pass and started barking at me. Scared the shit out of me since I had seen absolutely no one! The dog continued to bark his head off and start to come down the trail toward me.. and all I could think was.. "great.. this makes for a really crappy ending to my life.. mauled to death by a dog on a mountain. Nothing exciting like a bear or mountain lion or even a rabid marmot, but a common dog." Luckily for me, the dog was either called by his humans or decided I was too scrawny to eat and took off back down the other side of Hope. I never did see any other humans, but I can't imagine he was up there by himself!

The descent into Twin Lakes was gorgeous.. running next to a mountain stream NEVER sucks. I had plans to follow my directions and just keep following the course for as long as I could, but a deep, rushing water crossing caused me to turn around. A mountain biker was trying to figure out how to get across, but I took it as a sign that I should just turn around and head back over Hope. The mountain biker started following me and when I looked back somehow 2 more cyclists had joined him.. they were pushing their bikes and finally I stopped and told them that they were on the trail to go over Hope Pass which caused them to quickly turn around and head back down. Going this direction over Hope was much easier.. there was actually sections I could run. The descent on the Winfield side however is a quad killer! My biggest concern for the whole darn race is how to keep my quad from totally fizzle frying by the end. We just don't have long downhills in KC to practice on and I'm pretty darn sure my gym is not going to allow me to prop the end of a treadmill up on 2x4's to simulate downhills! I made good time down off Hope but then the 2 1/2 miles up the dirt road to Winfield was kinda not fun. It's really dusty and felt a lot steeper then it looks. As I was approaching Winfield, I heard cheering.. and couldn't figure out what the heck was going on. Mac & Angela had set up an aid station for me and had food and water ready and had been hanging out, reading books and waiting for me to show up. It was awesome! It was a great finish to a great day.
I finished just in time since some rainstorms moved in and we decided at that point instead of dealing with trying to get a fire started with wet wood and getting rained on all night, we'd go into Leadville and get a hotel for the night. We ended up at the Super 8 where I have rooms booked for the race and found they have a teeny tiny sauna and the rooms are not very well soundproofed. We ended up on the first floor and had a family of very large, insomniac clog dancers staying in the room above us. Mental note: call hotel and see if I can request a 3rd floor room for the race.
The next day I headed out to run the Powerlines section of the course..yipes! Yet another big ass hill to go up. I went up and up until I couldn't go up any longer due to a big ol' snow field and then I turned around and ran down. I stopped to talk to a couple of mtn. bikers that were out training for the MTB100 miler and we traded admiring compliments. I was a very lazy cyclist and didn't like to ride uphill very much so they have my admiration for all that uphill on a bike and I had their admiration for running 100 miles. It was a very uneventful run.. I went up and then I went down and the buzzing of the powerlines was in my ears the whole time. I decided that I need to incorporate a lot more hiking in my training and also a lot more time on the stair climber.. the hills were steep enough that it was more like going up stairs then being on the treadmill with the incline cranked. Downhills are still a problem but I will continue to do lots of squats and lunges and hope that having really strong quads will help.
Thursday I had to head back to Colorado Springs, and did a short run with my Dad on the Air Force Academy. I meant to do a long run but my calves were so trashed that at one point Dad found me "stretching" against a tree but I was actually crying 'cuz my legs hurt so bad! He scolded me and made me turn around and only do 6 miles for the day. I'm not sure how they got so trashed but I had to take a few days off running when I got back to KC. Yoga helped a lot, but they felt sore for many days. It was really a great trip: I had a really good time, I got to run sections of the course that I wanted to, I did some altitude work and I didn't have to deal with the heat and humidity for a week and I got to hang out in my favorite state.

Colorado Trip part 1

2009-06-23T19:41:00.007-05:00

(I'm making this multiple parts since the word concise doesn't seem to exist in my little corner of blog land.)

I flew into DIA on Wednesday morning and upon landing I kissed the ground and then peed (in the bathroom.. duh!) . I don't mind flying, it's not my favorite thing to do.. especially not since 9/11 but I don't usually get nervous or uptight about things.. but this flight was determined to rattle me. It started out by being delayed.. no biggie, I called the parents and told them to hold off leaving Colorado Springs for a bit (kinda odd that it takes the same amount of time for me to fly across Kansas as them to drive to DIA from the next "town".) We took off about 30 minutes late and horror of horrors I was seated next to a very small child and her parents. I have a multitude of reasons for not wanting or having kids but uncontrolled screaming ranks pretty high up there.. which is actually amusing since I was a total screamer as a child.. my parents wanted to get me in the Guinness Book for shrillest scream. Anyway, the little one was pretty good and was fascinated by my TrailRunner magazine so I pointed out things and she would grab at it and make happy noises... trail runner in the making I think. Well, all this went downhill quickly when we hit some bad turbulence, that went on and on and on. The Captain told us to sit our asses down NOW and remain down and belted in. I'd never heard a pilot say sit down NOW before, but I cranked the iPod and relaxed, or tried to.. the little one next to me started shrieking like there was no tomorrow and the plane started bouncing up and down like a kangaroo. For the first time on a flight I was pretty sure I was going to die.. or at least I WANTED to die. The child next to me managed to drown out even the most noisy of punk rock on my headphones. I really couldn't blame her.. I felt like screaming a bit myself! Finally we landed, and my luggage was acquired and parents found with very little problem.

It was my dad's birthday so we went to the Tattered Cover bookstore and I quickly accumulated a huge stack of books I wanted, but then a semblance of sanity asserted itself and I put them back. (sniff) My luggage didn't need to be overweight due to 90 new books. We had lunch at a great little place in Castle Rock, that catered to my every vegan whim... it was awesome, I don't know if I've ever been someplace else that was so eager to make me something not on the menu. We made it to the Springs where I tried to digest my amazing grilled veggie lunch in short order since I was due to meet Steve and Kathleen for a run through Garden of the Gods. I had a great time running with them, and thankfully they were very patient since 6 hours is not enough altitude acclimatization time for me to be able to run fast, or even up hills! I was sucking some serious wind and at first when my fingers went numb and my eyesight got a bit dark, I thought I was going to have to bag the run, but Kathleen took pity on me and my darth vader like gasps and slowed the pace down. Steve bounded ahead and we would come around corners to find him snapping shots of us.. now I see how they get so many amazing pictures on their blog! I had a really great time getting to know them and I hope to run with them again.. maybe next time after a day or 2 of adjustment! After the run they were talking with my Dad and it turns out that they knew who he is and use his trails website a lot and Kathleen knows Dad's long time running partner... crazy small running world!

The next morning I got up early and went up Pikes Peak. Dad came along but wasn't planning on going as far as I was so he brought Sammy, their adorable golden retriever as company. I was really surprised at just how much I was able to push the pace going up, I figured after my performance of the night before I'd be dying again, but I guess a good nights sleep and lots of water helped. It was a cool, gray day and by the time I made Barr Camp at 10,200 ft it was starting to snow a bit. I decided to turn around there instead of pushing on to A-frame.... I had a jacket with me, but you never know in the high country how bad a storm will get. I was able to make really good time on my way down with minimal quad soreness. Pikes Peak is my favoritest mountain.. I guess it's because I grew up in it's shadow but it never fails to make me happy, when I die I want my ashes scattered on one of the slopes.

That evening I made a vegan stir fry for my parents.. lots of organic veggies, tofu and soba noodles. Dad eyed it with askance but ate it anyway and even had seconds, mom is very open to moving towards a more veggie based lifestyle so she was cool. After dinner I curled up on the couch with a hilarious mystery picked from one of the million books scattered all over the house. My friends Mac and Angela were driving in from KC and would spend the night and then the next morning we would be on our way to Salida and the house they own. They made it in around midnight and immediately crashed. We spent the next morning relaxing on the back porch, gazing at Pikes Peak and enjoying the perfect Colorado weather, until we roused ourselves enough to head to Whole Foods and the best outdoor shop in Colorado Springs - the Mountain Chalet. Locally owned, has tons of great stuff and always very friendly and helpful.

I picked up a pair of Vibram Sprint Five Fingers (in PINK, no less!!), I've been eyeballing these for awhile but wanted to try them on before buying. I tried 3 sizes and finally settled on the smallest size, I still think the next size up would have been perfect but that size made my big toe hurt.. like someone was poking hot needles in it.. not fun. I think the seam where the sole and the stretchy upper meet was rubbing just wrong. I wore them out of the store and only took them off all week to put on running shoes... definitely not ready to run in them though. Finally we finished all our shopping, loaded up the cars and headed out to Salida, which is about a 2 hour drive from the Springs. Dad was very nice and lent me his emergency 4-wheel drive pickup to drive all over Colorado.
I love that truck, it's an early 90's Toyota with high clearance and a growly engine, and it makes me homesick. It's the stereotypical mountain town vehicle; 4 Wheel drive, banged up and worth a heck of a lot less then all the gear inside it. It's not quite the same now that I'm not racing bikes, but back in the day my bikes were always worth more then my cars. Anywho, we made it to Salida uneventfully, and pulling up at Mac and Angelas house, I realized they were going to have to drag me kicking and screaming back to KC. It's a gorgeous house that sits on a bluff above town with an INCREDIBLE view of the 3 mountain ranges that surround Salida (Sawatch, Mosquito and Sangre De Christos).. and the hot tub has the perfect view of all 3!! They showed me around Salida, picked up some beer and we headed back to the house for dinner. Not only was I staying in paradise, but I was staying with 2 gourmet cooks... no way was I leaving! Dinner was awesome and as we were sitting in the hot tub watching the stars come out, a friendly local fox came sniffing up to the edge of the hot tub.. for a few minutes we honestly thought he was going to jump in! It was the perfect capper to the evening.

(part 2 to come)

I'm back!

2009-06-20T18:08:00.004-05:00

I had every intention of posting periodic reports during my trip, but the allure of being totally cut off from the computer, cell phone and outside world won out. I got lots of running done and scared the crap out of myself..... Leadville humbled me and I'm heading back to the training "drawing" board and changing some stuff up. I'm still trying to unpack, do laundry and reacquaint myself with my husband so a bunch of longer, picture filled reports are on the way!

Colorado bound

2009-06-10T08:08:00.002-05:00

I'm about to leave for my beautiful Colorado mountains! 10 days of nothing to do but run, run, run and eat, eat, eat! I'm flying into Denver, spending a few days with my parents and then I'm off to Leadville/Salida to run as much of the Leadville course as I can squeeze in. I'm hoping for a quick, easy adjustment to the altitude! Tonight I get to run with 2 of my favorite Colorado bloggers, Steve and Kathleen.. check out their blog, it's chock full of gorgeous Colorado scenery and good writing. And then on Thursday I'm going to run Pikes Peak with my dad.... at least as high as we can get, from what I understand A-frame might be the best we can hope for right now due to the heavy snowpack. I'll take any amount of uphill and downhill at high altitude as I can get! Then on Friday I'm off to L-ville! I got a new Flip video camera the other day, so expect some video in addition to still shots!

2009-06-04T12:02:00.007-05:00

I've had a few people comment on my blog and also email me in awe of being able to go out and run a 30 mile training run at any time.. but it's taken me a long while to get to that point and most importantly, you have to WANT to run that far... everyone in this world has the ability to run 5, 10, 30, 50, 100 miles if they so desire and work towards it. Not everyone has the time or the desire and there is not a damn thing wrong with that. We all have amazing strength inside, but sometimes we get lazy and don't let it come out and play.
Right now, I'm watching 4 of my formerly non running friends find their wings. Abby, Angela, Mac and Rhonda kicked some serious ass last Saturday at a local 5K. Abby is 3 weeks from a double mastectomy, Angela and Mac are barely 6 weeks from a total sedentary lifestyle, and Rhonda broke her foot back in January and has been recovering from that. I LOVE getting emails or texts telling me how for the first time one of them got the runners high, or made it all the way around the park without stopping or added another mile. They are training for a triathlon in August, but there are already plans for more races in the future. Another good friend Beck, has been quietly, steadily running for a year, battling through some killer allergies and running on a treadmill when she just can't take it outside anymore. She has expressed an interest in doing a trail half marathon in the spring! It makes me so very happy to see some of the joy I feel reflected in their faces and voices. They are letting their inner strength come out and play... how are you letting yours out?

the best days...

2009-05-28T12:34:00.003-05:00

Right now, I'm having an amazingly kickass training cycle. Everything feels good and every run just makes me feel stronger.... call me Super(wo)man! I wish it could always feel like this.. no aches and pains, just easy, fast, amazing runs on strong legs. Even my weightlifting routine is going great! I know it won't last for long, because well, that's the nature of these cycles but damn I'm enjoying it while it does. My biggest worry right now, is figuring out how to feel like this come August 22!
My mom is so great, she found this vintage postcard from the 1940's showing Twin Lakes in Leadville. I framed it and it sits above my computer reminding me when I feel lazy that Leadville will chew me up and spit me out if I don't work hard. I can't gut this one through on minimal training. For my friends who aren't familiar with the Leadville 100 race course, Twin Lakes is the location of an aid station that you hit at 39.5 miles and 79 miles... it's also more importantly, 2 gorgeous lakes (hence the name Twin Lakes.. duh!) at the base of Mt Elbert. I've been to Twin Lakes many times before, but always as crew for my dad.. it's going to be scary/exciting to have the roles reversed!
I'll have the worlds best crew in the form of my mom, who is an uber-experienced ultra crew chief. She knows how to hustle and how to remain calm in the face of blisters, puke, blood and whining ultra runners. She is also a great judge of telling you to either "get your ass out of that chair and get going" or "get your ass in the car before you die" She's been doing this for about 30 years now and I'm blessed that she has agreed to take on another generation.
My Dad will be helping also and I just hope Mom will be able to keep him from dropping everything and taking off running! I do look forward to having his advice at all the aid stations, not only has he been doing this for longer then most people, he's done Leadville many times and also paced friends in years he wasn't doing it himself. I look forward to giving him a big hug at the finish line!
My wonderful, patient husband will be breaking his ultra crewing cherry! He'll be in the best of hands and my Mom will help him remain calm... if she can keep him from worrying about me he'll have a great time! He has been so very supportive and encouraging about this summer, I really can't thank him enough. He's been ensuring that I can get in as many training miles as I can and covering my work shifts so I can go train in Leadville for 9 days in June. I am a lucky, lucky girl. I can't help but have a great race with 3 of my favorite people in the world taking care of me and giving me encouragement!
Lastly but certainly not leastly is my pacer extraordinaire Christy. She gets to hang up her crew chief hat and just run with me! She's actually been training like she's running the whole thing herself and since she already did pacing duties at Rocky Raccoon she knows what works and doesn't work for me. There will also be many other Kansas City area runners out there, so seeing them and sharing positive energy with them and their crews will help greatly.
As I get more and more things set and dialed in, I can't wait and at the same time can wait! I would love for it to be next weekend and at the same time I know I'm not ready yet!

Squished bug

2009-05-21T11:13:00.004-05:00

Friday I headed out to Clinton Lake early in the morning to get in 30 miles, originally Christy was supposed to join me but she was still deep in paper writing hell, so I was on my own. It was a humid morning, the sort that coats you with a layer of sticky, salty schwee right away. (and yes, schwee is a word) I kept thinking my Nathan pack was leaking but it was just the Midwest.

I had a great time taking pictures and enjoying having the trails to myself.... well myself and all the great wildlife I was seeing! Turtles, lizards, snakes, squirrels, deer, skunks, birds (lots and lots of birds).. it was a freaking Disney movie! The worst part of being on the trails first thing in the morning is the spider webs... it's still early enough in the season that the spinners haven't gotten real bad, but I was definitely trailing webs off my hat and face. Running trails has helped me get over some of my arachnophobia, I used to be HORRIFIED of spiders. Screaming, running away, & hysterics at just the sight of a small spider was the norm for me. Now I can deal with them a bit more calmly... I'm still not crazy about them but I can even deal with having small ones on me. I ran on the white trail out to the 12 mile marker, stopping at the swim beach to refill with water, I briefly thought of dropping down to the blue trail but since that one tends to be a lot muddier, I just turned around and headed straight back on white.
About a mile from the car, my cell phone rang and it was Christy warning me that they had issued tornado warnings for the area.. my original plan was to refuel at the car and go out for the remaining 6 miles, but then decided maybe I shouldn't push my luck. I bagged the run at 24 miles... I think I got lucky after the Freestate tornado, I don't want to tempt the trail gods. As I was cleaning up at the car, a couple mountain bikers were heading out and they stopped to ask me how muddy the trails were and our conversation went like this:

MB: How muddy is it?
Me: The first 3 miles are total mud bogs, but it's good after that until the 9 mile mark and you'll hit another bog, and then it's clear at least to the 12 mile marker.. after that I don't know.
1 MB to the other: Dude! Did you hear that.. she just ran 12 miles.. you're such a pussy you can't even ride 12.
Me: Actually I ran 24 miles.
MB: .........
and off they rode. Didn't even say thanks for the trail info.
As I left Lawrence and headed back to KC, the sky was looking wicked dark and scary so I was really glad I bagged the rest of the run.. turns out there was some torrential rain and hail moving in.

Saturday morning was the Trail Hawks group run at Clinton and then our first official group meeting afterwards. As I headed west on I-70 at 80 mph (yes, I was running a few minutes late) a (luckily) small size deer decided to risk the crossing... sadly for both of us she stepped right in front of me. The deer went splat and my bug went smush. I was in total shock as I pulled off the highway, but as I took stock I realized how lucky I was! She didn't come through the windshield and my bug seemed to still be drivable (after I ripped off the dragging front bumper anyway). I was pretty freaked out and made a couple of hysterical calls... first to the husband and then to a few people in the Hawks, so no one was waiting for me. In hindsight I maybe should have waited to calm down a bit before making the calls, since I was a crying, sobbing mess. I hate losing my cool in front of others and I think I scared some people. I headed back home and skipped the run, I was definitely too shaken up and wasn't sure just HOW drivable the car was.
My poor bug, I named it Smush a few years ago, 'cuz it's seen it's fair share of problems. I bought her from my brother who used to rally car race her, so that was my first mistake! This is the second deer/car incident she's been in and then there was the time (only a week after I bought her) that I hydroplaned on I-35 and did 3 loop-de-loops and played pinball with the guardrail. I swear I'm not a bad driver although one of the guys I run with commented that I drive like I stole it. Sadly for me, I was only carrying the minimum insurance on the car, so I have to come up with the moolah to fix her. I guess I'll be learning the intricacies of junkyards! Luckily silver bugs are pretty common... and if I have to get the whole thing painted it would be a good chance to paint it pink! WHEE!

Watch this video!

2009-05-14T12:40:00.002-05:00

Someone posted this on the ultra list yesterday and it's just too good not to share! For all my non trail running friends... THIS shows why I do what I do and if it doesn't make you want to go out and run... well, I give up.
XOXOXO
Coleen

UltraRunning from Matt Hart on Vimeo.

(real) Rock Creek race report!

2009-05-11T15:05:00.003-05:00

(I realized while typing it that most of my race reports start out with the phrase "I got up early....", this one is no different!)

I got up early after a few too short hours of sleep.. damn those friends of mine scheduling rock shows the night before races! Seriously, everyone needs to check my schedule before booking shows! (kidding, only, kidding!) I drove to Lawrence and met up with Christy, Nick and Renee at the River Trails trail head and we all 4 carpooled to Perry Lake. Less emissions and the chatter kept me from falling asleep. When we got to the park, there was much greeting of friends and hugs while waiting in line to check in. Willie and Karen Lambert put on a great race and they really know how to take care of the runners but their races are also laid back affairs which I really appreciate. I checked out my goodie bag and tried to decide what to wear... it was a pretty brisk morning (Gary was wearing tights!) but I knew it was going to be in the 70's later.. but the questions was.. how much later?? I chose to wear my short sleeve Atayne shirt and giraffe print Moeben sleeves, (it turned out to be the right choice.. when it got too warm I pushed the sleeves down and kept on going) grabbed my handheld bottle and I was good to go.

Willie gave us some instructions "1/2 marathon runners follow PINK ribbons" blah, blah, blah "Did I mention 1/2 marathon runners follow the pink ribbons?" Then we all walked down the road a ways to a suitable crack in the pavement where we all lined up. Willie gave us a last minute instruction "1/2 marathon follow the PINK ribbon!!!" and we were off. I appreciated the constant reminder that I was to follow the pink ribbons since I had earned my first DNF out here last year by getting lost! Whoops! (for a recap click here ) The speedy guys took off down the pavement and up the hill and then turned onto the single track and the rest of us mortals ran the short pavement section at a more sedate pace. I really like how the pavement and the hill breaks everyone up before hitting the single track.. no dead stop bottlenecking!

It was a gorgeous morning to be running the trails with friends. Even though we had gotten a ton of rain recently, the trails were in great condition... a few small mud bogs here and there but mostly dry, gorgeous trail! The sun was out and peeking through the trees and I warmed up enough to push my Moeben sleeves down. My legs were feeling a bit heavy but I tried to keep a steady pace and got a chance to chat with a number of different people as the usual ebb and flow of the trails happened. I ran with Deb Johnson for awhile and she was trying to decide if she was ready to run her first 100 at Kettle Moraine in June, I did all I could to talk her into it. She's running so strong and has an amazing base she'd be silly not to! I just know she'd rock that bitch and rock it hard! She dropped me hard on the downhills (I need to take some lessons from her!) and after that I was by myself for the rest of the race.

My stomach got grumpier as the run went on... I really should know better then to drink beer on tap the night before a race. Most bars don't clean their lines often enough so draft beer can be contaminated with all sorts of nastiness. Maybe my next tattoo should read "bottles only!" to remind me.... or I suppose I could just not drink before a race! I kept eyeballing the bushes but lack of TP kept me from heading off trail.... there was no way I was going to use one of my beloved Drymax socks and I'm always forgetting what poison ivy looks like so I figured I'd better just deal with the stomach cramps instead. Other then the stomach, I was feeling pretty good after I warmed up. The course was very well marked..even to the point of wrapping pink tape on logs that were lying on the ground.. but of course I tripped on a well marked log anyway.. actually let's just say I tripped on the pink tape instead of the log. All I got were dirty knees and a sore shoulder though... phew! Perry Lake is much hillier then I remembered so it made it a very good training run! I'm going to be spending a LOT more time out there... the trails aren't blaze marked like Clinton Lake so I'll just have to go out and get lost a few times until I figure it out.... either that or try and hook up with some of the Topeka trail folks and let them lead me around!

The aid stations were great but I was going light.. just water refills and 1 orange slice... in retrospect I probably should have eaten a bit more but I was afraid for my wobbly guts so the last 2 miles were slower then they should have been. Each of the aid stations was very well staffed by an adult and also a plethora of kids.. it brought back memories of hanging out at races as a child and running around like a crazy person. I got a chance to wish Lee good luck at the last aid station, as he is running the Berryman 50 next weekend... so send all sorts of good wishes his way! I finished up in 2:36:03 (unofficial)... a bit slower then I wanted but not awful. The awards were going on as I finished which meant that everyone was still around and I got to hear all the stories... and we hung out till the end to help cheer everyone home. A truly enjoyable spring Saturday! Something I have to note: last year at this series I picked up a lot of trash on the trails during the race (empty gu & gel packets and cups), this year there was nothing on the trails for me to pick up! I was so very happy to notice it.. of course there is always the possibility that there was someone running in front of me that is just as cranky about seeing race generated trash on the trails and was picking it up before I got there.. but somehow I doubt it. I hope it's a sign that people are being more aware that it's NOT appropriate to throw their trash on the trails.

*photo by Rick Mayo who stomped all over most of the field as per usual and in addition to being a super, super fast runner is a really nice, encouraging guy to boot! He'll be kicking some ass Kansas style at Western States this year!

Rock Creek half mary and other runs

2009-05-11T13:45:00.003-05:00

I've been sticking to my stated intention of hitting the gym hard in my prep for Leadville, but that means my legs have not been as chipper during my runs. It's kinda frustrating in the short term, but I know it's all for the future. On Tuesday I ran at the Prairie Center again.. with as much rain as we've been getting, it's the one trail around that's not 10 feet deep in mud. I headed over after work with the intent of getting in 2 loops before my friend Beck arrived to join me for another 2. (Each loop is 3.2 miles). The first one was a lollygagging warm up but when I got back to the car I realized that I had taken a bit TOO long and was either going to have to do the 2nd loop totally fast or leave my friend waiting on me. I try to be a good friend so I did my fastest ever loop out there.. running though all the water crossings, motoring up the hills and scaring the wildlife with my heavy breathing. When I got back to the car, no Beck yet... sweet! Turns out she got stuck in traffic anyway so I didn't have to haul ass quite so much.. but oh well, it's good for me! We got in 2 loops together with the last one being pretty slow so she could stop and make a homemade map so she could run by herself without ending up confused and lost. It started to rain just as we finished up... perfect timing!

Wednesday I spent the morning cleaning my house in prep for my Mom's arrival on Thursday.. first time in many, many years I got to spend Mothers Day with her! Wednesday night I headed to Clinton Lake in Lawrence to do speed work and hill repeats with Christy and Laurie and then meet up with the rest of the Trail Hawks and get in a few more miles. The 3 of us headed out easy to the flat, gravel dam where we could chase each other back and forth on the only level area around. Laurie has some serious speed and was putting the hurts on Christy and I with every step. It's good to have someone to try and catch.. I just wish I had a better shot of actually doing it!! After a few of those we hit the long, technical hill at the end of the damn and did a few repeats of that. We took turns leading and I really think it's easiest to be first up the hill rather then following! I definitely like the hill repeats better then flat sprints.
After we finished up we headed out on the blue trail to meet up with the Hawk Pack at Lands End, but when we got to our usual foot wetting stream crossing it had turned into a who-knows-how deep river! I waded in about 5 feet and the water was already up past my waist so we turned around and headed back. We cut over to the white trail at our earliest chance and headed out to the 5 mile marker and then turned around hoping to catch the Hawk Pack before they dropped down to the blue trail and ended up trapped also. Shortly after the 5 we ran smack into Jim and Nick, issued the warning and kept going back in the car direction. Minutes later we ran into Gary, and he decided to turn around and run back with us. It was the first time he'd been able to run since Freestate with his injured toes! We picked up Levi on our charge back to the cars and were hoping we'd find Mircea and Lisa also, but they cut the run short due to major school commitments. I finished up with about 9 miles on the garmin, we hung out waiting for Jim and Nick and then headed out for some dinner and drinks. Thursday morning I faithfully got up and did my gym workout but got in no running since after work I had to go pick up my mom!

Friday morning I got up really early to head over to the park to get in 20 miles, but the early morning lightning storm put the kibosh on that plan. I hung out and waited for things to settle down and got more and more cranky the later it got. I was only able to get in 10 miles because of the late start. My mom and I had appointments to go to the spa and get facials done in the afternoon so I had to wrap things up way before I was ready. I didn't think the spa people would appreciate a muddy, stinky salt covered runner so I hustled home and showered before heading over. Mom and I had a lovely time and came out looking at least 10 years younger (or so we told each other!) For dinner we went to my favorite veggie restaurant Eden Alley and I ate WAYYYY too much! After that we headed to Davey's for a benefit show for the Midwest Music Foundation, Mom was a great sport since the bar scene is NOT usually her thing! She got to meet a bunch of our friends and listen to some good music and Erik and I had some beers and relaxed. I almost forgot that I had a race the next morning! We left at an earlier hour then normal but I still only got in 4 hours of sleep.. oh well!

OK, this post has gone on WAYYYY too long so I will post my Rock Creek race report separately.. don't go anywhere!

*picture is my mom and I at Cafe Seed waiting for some tasty vegan brunch goodness on Mothers Day.

Ramblings

2009-05-04T11:56:00.003-05:00

Gary Henry took this picture of me as I was told that we were being pulled from the race due to tornadoes.. grrrrr, I said, grrrr! He has some great pictures from the event on his website UltraStory.com.

I took a couple days off after Freestate and drank beer and ate lots and lots, but now it's time to get serious about Leadville training. Despite taking a few days off I still I got in 30 miles of running and lots and lots of squats, lunges and core work. YEOUCH! I spent the first half of the week sore from slip sliding in the mud at Clinton and the other half of the week hobbling around with weightlifting muscle soreness. I forgot how much lunges can hurt!
I'm looking forward to racing at Lake Perry this weekend.. Rock Creek Trail Series #2. Somehow I forgot about the first race of the series a few weeks ago, which made me really sad. Willie at Great Plains Running Company puts on great races and does so much to support the local trail running community and is a great ultra runner too!

On Saturday I was headed over to the Prairie Center to get in some mileage before I met up with some newbie runner friends to show them the joys of running in the mud. On my way I ran into a road race, (not literally) but for a split second I considered parking and registering, but reconsidered when I remembered how much I hate running on the roads and with huge crowds of people...instead I had the 5K trail loop all to myself for hours. Kinda to myself anyway, I saw tons of birds, squirrels and rabbits. The stream crossings were especially rife with some amazing birds and the cold water felt great. Later on I had a great time running with the newbie runners too...showing new people the joys of running on the trails and stomping through the mud and playing in the streams makes me very happy.

If you subscribe to Running Times magazine or are near a newsstand, there is an article about Kansas City trail running in the June edition and I got a few quotes in there. One of the quotes tickled me pink..I talk about how great the Trail Nerds have been to me, but the magazine comes out hot on the heels of me being kicked out of the Kansas City Trail Nerds due to my involvement in helping create a Lawrence based trail group. Needless to say, I found the timing hilarious!

Freestate 100K April 25 2009

2009-04-27T12:21:00.008-05:00

Saturday dawned warm, overcast and breezy... I was pretty happy to see the clouds since at one point the weather folks were calling for close to 90 degree temps.. but by the end of the day I would be cursing those same clouds. I spent the night at my friend Christy's house so I could get an extra hour of sleep, and we had spent the evening getting drop bags together so the morning was all about eating and getting dressed and getting out the door. I wore my awesome, amazing, supremely bright tie dye print skirt from Moeben... I had been saving it for this race and pairing it with my Atayne shirt, matching tie dye sleeves from Shannon at Moeben, Drymax max pro socks, and dirty girl gaiters I was feeling pretty unbeatable!

This was the first time I wasn't going to have a crew for a long race, because my regular crew Christy, Debbie and Laurie were all racing today too! All 3 of them are training for Mt Hood 50 miler, so they opted for the 40 mile option and their longest distance yet. Drop bags were a new thing for me since with an amazing crew, I had never felt the need for them before. I had spent a few days of putting stuff in bags and taking things out until I got fed up and decided whatever the heck was in there come 7 am on Saturday would have to do. I wasn't overly worried since I knew the aid stations would rock, but I have a few special things I want during a race, once those were in, I was good to go.

The time before the start went by in a blur of greeting friends, checking in and talking, talking, talking. One of my favorite bloggers Ken aka Trail Zombie was there to do the 40 miler and then jump in his car and drive back to Oklahoma to do a marathon on Sunday... he's crazy like that!! With a "GO", we were off into the trails, it was a slow start as everyone had to file on the single track but I wasn't in any hurry. I was hoping to finish somewhere between 12-14 hours, I knew it was going to depend on just how muddy the trail was and how hot it got in the afternoon. We had had quite a bit of rain in the weeks leading up to the race, and only a few days of dry out time.. the white trail usually dries pretty quick but I figured the lower blue trail would still be a soupy mess.
I settled into a comfortable group including Nick, Mircea, Lee, Danny, Pat, Debbie, Brad and others I would only be able to identify by the backs of their legs. We stuck together for quite awhile with people joining up and then dropping off periodically. I was feeling great, which made me VERY happy... I hadn't had a good run in weeks and was feeling pretty freaked out leading up to the race. I've been dealing with shin & calf pain and would have to stop and stretch a lot on most runs so it was such a freeing feeling to not have that pain. In no time at all we were at the first aid station (Lands End) which was run by Kyle & Stacy Amos, Caleb Chatfield & Rick Mayo... they run an AMAZING aid station, and are some of the nicest people in the area. I swear they make you feel like a rockstar. Luckily for all the runners you hit this aid station twice a lap and since they are all experienced ultra folks, if you are having ANY problems the chances are good that they can help. With a big handful of watermelon and their cries of encouragement ringing in my ears, I was off again. The 3.5 miles to the next aid station was one of the muddiest sections of trail... but it always is, so I was expecting it. I slipped and slid and tried to run as much as possible, but there were sections that I felt like risking a twisted ankle for a bit of time was not worth it, so I walked through some of the worst.

The other manned aid station is run by KUS (Kansas Ultrarunners Society) every year and a big hug from Stacy Sheridan makes all the hurts go away! It takes a special person to not flinch when a sweaty, salty, smelly runner gives you a big hug, but that woman seems to relish those hugs. I filled up on more water, watermelon and Stacy hugs and continued down the trail. Watermelon is the best ultra fuel for me and getting a big handful at every aid station ensured a big boost for me and an increase in speed. I finished the first loop in 3:59, which made me very happy, fueled back up on watermelon and headed out for the 2nd lap. I was by myself as I started this loop so I stuck my iPod on, sunk into the music and tried to keep a steady pace going (even through the mud). I wasn't feeling quite as spunky this lap, the humidity was pretty wicked and the trail was getting more and more churned up. The course takes us right along the shoreline of the lake for a section and it's super rocky and technical, but gorgeous and it took my mind off the burgeoning aches and pains.

Shortly after the shoreline trail ends I hit the Lands End Aid Station and got my boost from the watermelon and friends, unfortunately it didn't last long and I really felt like I was slogging along. I had hit a low spot and was wallowing in it, even catching up to Gary Henry, one of my favorite Trail Hawks couldn't bring me up... I was dizzy and hurting and was looking for a reason to quit. I fell off from Gary's pace and ended up by myself again wallowing in my self pity and had pretty much convinced myself that I was going to drop to the 40 mile race when I got to the finish. It also didn't help that I was lapped by the 100K winner near the end of this loop... dude was over 20 miles ahead of me... even if I had been feeling good it still would have been a blow to the ego. I dragged myself into the start/finish area in 8:35 feeling supremely sorry for myself and looking for someone to give me a reason to drop.

I acted like I was going back out... filled up my pack with food, messed with my sock and talked to Nick who had finished the 40 miler 30 minutes or so before. As I chatted, Sophia handed me a black bean burger and I ate about 1/2 it, took a caffeine pill and another handful of watermelon and started to wander back towards the trail. No one had given me a good reason to quit so I headed back out on the trail. DAMN! Once my feet were on the trail, there was no way I would quit, so I resigned myself to finishing the damn race. I pulled out my cell phone and gave my husband a quick call to give him a better ballpark finishing time and warned him that this last loop could be real slow. He was going to be coming out to see me finish and bringing a couple of my favorite friends Mac and Angela, so I told them to bring plenty of beer since they might be waiting on me awhile! A few minutes after I got off the phone, the typical ultra thing happened and I got my second wind... I believe I yelled "let's rock this bitch" as I took off running. Sometimes all we need out of life is some caffeine, good food and a loved one's voices. A few miles later the thunder and lightning started and then my iPod decided to be funny by playing Eurthymics "Here Comes the Rain Again".. ha ha!

A few minutes later as I was running along the shoreline trail the tornado sirens started going off. I cast a quick look around, didn't see any funnels so kept going... when I hit the Lands End aid station they were getting everything under one tent and cleaning up a bit so I grabbed some more ice and water and watermelon from Brett who had taken over Kyle's spot and got out of there along with Lee and Willie from Topeka. We kinda discussed what we would do if a tornado rolled through and joked about it and then I was feeling quite good and took off. The sirens kept going off and it was eerie to hear them all through out town and over the water. About this time the lightning was getting really bad, I kept looking around me but in such thick tree cover there was not really any way to tell if a twister was creeping up. My iPod decided that this was the best time to play REM's song "It's the End of the World as We Know It (and I feel fine).
At one point there was a lightning strike close enough to raise all the hair on my body and rattle my teeth and I whooped in surprise and heard an answering yelp from behind me.. I think we were all starting to worry a bit! I normally would never answer my cell phone during a race (hell, I don't usually even carry it during a race!) but when it started ringing I grabbed it and it was my friends Mac and Angela and they were freaking out.... the conversation went like this:
me: (pant pant) HI!
them: holy shit! Are you OK???
me: um, yeah..
them: where are you??
me: I dunno, somewhere on the trail... the tornado sirens are going off.
them: NO SHIT! we're watching the news and there is serious shit going down in the park right now.. there's even someone on the phone calling from the race in a tornado shelter! They are telling everyone at the park to take cover.
me: huh, well.. (crack! boom!) um, I'm OK, but the lightning is really close, I'm going to get off the phone now. BYE!
them: YOU'RE CRAZY!!!
(click)
So then the rain started coming down really hard, but I was having fun.. and was REALLY glad I didn't quit after 40 miles! The only spot I was really nervous was when you break out of the trees and cross an open dam. I hauled ASS over that dam... when you are on it, you're the tallest thing around.... not where you want to be during lightning!!
About this time Deb Johnson caught up with me and we ran together and talked about how crazy the weather was but about 1/2 mile from the KUS aid station, one of the volunteers intercepted us and told us that we were done.. the race had been called off. We were both pretty darn bummed but knew better then to try and argue. I wished that I had been able to run a bit faster during the 2nd lap because most of the people that were already past the KUS aid station were able to finish. They hauled 6 or 7 of us back to the finish in the back of a pickup and we were treated to a bit of hail on the way back. Anyone who had big trucks were deployed to get the runners back to the finish area.
When I got back I was treated to HUGE hugs from Nick, Laurie and Debbie who were all very glad to see I was OK. I never really felt afraid but I guess there was a twister touchdown on the lake and someone (not with the race) got struck by lightning on one of the dams. The rangers had everyone they could round up herded in the storm shelters, I think it was worse on anyone not actually running!! I hosed pounds of mud off me and watched as some of the lucky 100kers finished. Luckily for the logistics of it all, the marathoners and most of the 40milers were done so there was a minimal amount of people on the trails when it all went down. Ben gave those of us that got pulled 40 mile finisher medals and apologized for having to pull us, but as disappointed as I am, I can't fault him. I wouldn't have wanted to make the call.
I got 51.5 miles in.... not a bad days work even if it wasn't quite what I had planned for. All my Trail Hawk friends that were doing the 40 mile distance for the first time did awesome! Debbie, Christy, Laurie, Mircea, Pat all ROCKED it! I'm sooooo very proud of them all! And I'm truly grateful that they all got a chance to finish.. while I'm disappointed for me, this was not a target race for me and while I haven't ever done a 100k, since I've done over that I know I can do it. As always, the volunteers were spectacular and as always I'm very aware that my success in finishing these things is very much due to those wonderful people. I could never express my thankfullness to everyone involved with these races! My fabulous husband and friends also get my hearfelt thanks and love for putting up with my strange obsession and even encouraging it!

I do need to note that even though my feet spent 11.5 hours completely soaked and immeresed in mud I did not have a single blister!! I am a total Drymax convert and will be buying a few more pairs of the max pro socks. YAY! My Moeben skirt was also killer and as soon as Shannon starts selling them I'm going to pick up a few more. I LOVE running in skirts but in this one I totally forgot I had anything on.. it's that comfortable. Everyone commented on it and if I had had a trunk full of them I'm sure I could have sold 20 of them. I'm taking great satisfaction in getting clothing, shoe and nutrition choices dialed in. I still have plenty of work to do with nutrition but it's getting there. Ah geez... I just realized that this counts as a DNF! Well, crap!

*pictures "stolen" from Dick Ross at Seekcrun.com and the mud photo stolen from Ken

2009-04-24T14:54:00.004-05:00

On Wednesday my very sweet friend Beck sent me a Happy Runniversary email, she remembered that it is a year ago this weekend that I ran my first marathon. After finishing it I thought maybe this year I'd be doing the 40 mile option.. I really didn't think that I'd be doing the 100k and would have already finished a 100 miler. Last year at this time, I was telling myself that no matter what.. I was going to finish.. if I had to drag myself over the finish line on all fours, I was going to finish. Luckily the dramatics were not necessary, but it's the same mantra I've used going into all my new distances. I found a quote from Sri Chinmoy in another blog that sums up how I feel: Give up giving up. Obviously, if I am injured I will DNF a race, but going in with the mind fully engaged and with no thought of failure is one of the most important things I can do to ensure my success.
I'm not sure what to expect this weekend, I don't feel like my training has been very quality but I know that I will not give up. I'm very excited for a bunch of my friends and running partners this weekend, there are a lot of them that are testing themselves with new distances and I wish I could ensure that they will suceed... but all I can do is to remind them to keep going and to smile while doing it.

2009-04-20T18:58:00.004-05:00

The Lawrence Trail Hawks rule!! On Saturday they spent hours cleaning up the trails at Clinton Lake so they looked pretty for the Freestate race this weekend. I am ashamed to admit that I was supposed to be there but had to work instead. My heart was with them even though my body was elsewhere. They cleaned up 16 full 30 gallon bags (and 4 bags full of recyclables) but we still have a lot to do... luckily one of the aims of the Lawrence Trail Hawks is some serious trail love. So it may have been our first trail clean up but it certainly won't be our last!

I'm in taper mode for Freestate 100k on Saturday and I'm frankly freaking out. I'm not feeling like I have the mileage in for this race, which is probably just a figment of my taper crazed brain. I've been spending my non running time doing things like: washing my Nathan pack, cleaning my Garmin watchband, and digging mud out of the crevices in my toenails. I'm much better off when I run. While I'm looking forward to this race, I'm almost ready for it to be over with. I'm ready to hit Leadville training really hard and I feel like Freestate (and the weather) has kinda been a roadblock to it. After this weekend though I can lay out a good schedule and get on it! The weather forecast for the rest of the week calls for sunny skies and warm temps which are a godsend.... our trails are really muddy and wet right now. Saturdays forecast is 75 and sunny.... it's gonna be a warm and hopefully a dry one!

(i stole the pictures from Gary "Story Hawk" Henry and his blog at Ultrastory.com

Rough weekend

2009-04-13T13:49:00.002-05:00

My weekend didn't go exactly how I planned it, which can make me kinda cranky. First off my planned Friday morning 20+ miler with Gary and Christy got rained out. I don't object to running in the rain normally, but combined with the cold, noone was feeling it. I'm really, really ready for some warm, dry spring weather!! I waited till the rain cleared up in the early afternoon and went out to Wyco and did some hill work... on the (eek!) pavement!! I haven't run on the pavement in months and months! The 6 1/2 mile loop of the lake has some nice, long, steady climbs and if you can avoid the drunk fishermen, it's not a bad paved loop to do. I'm going to try hitting it at least once a week after Freestate... hills are the focus of my training from here on out... Leadville is going to chew me up and spit me out if I don't get really serious. This week I did 2 days of hill repeats and 2 days of cranked incline treadmill walking and I'm hoping to add at least one more treadmill day in the week.

Saturday I got up extra early to pick up a friend of a friend for our usual group run. Brian was visiting from St Louis and is doing his first ultra at Berryman in May, so we had a bunch to talk about while driving to Lawrence. There was a pretty good crowd for the group run, mud not withstanding. It was a gorgeous, sunny morning but unfortunately for me, my legs were shot. Shot, shot, shot. I could hardly keep up and then I took a nice fall into the mud, which made me cranky and then I had to "see a man about a horse", so I lost total contact with the group. Lands End at 6.5 miles is where we normally regroup and sure enough everyone waited for my crabby ass. Instead of continuing on to 15 miles with everyone else, I decided to just turn around by myself and only get in 13... I knew I was just going to be struggling and was irritated enough that I wouldn't even be good company.
On the way back, my attitude got a bit better but my legs were still really tired, it's definitely time to taper! I chatted for a brief moment with a guy training for FreeState also, we expressed hope that the mud would dry up before then... I also was passed by David Wakefield, he was flying along the ground like the mud was of no consequence. When I got back to the car, I de-mudded myself and settled down in a camp chair to enjoy the sun and wait for everyone else to make it back. While I was sitting there I noticed a woman runner checking out the map board so I yelled over that she should stay on the white trail since it was much less muddy. That prompted a conversation, and it turned out Laurie was visiting from Texas and had run Rocky Raccoon 100 also! Total small world! We talked for awhile and then she had to get running since she only had 2 hours before her ride would be back to pick her up. It was nice to make that connection and we expressed the hope that we would meet up next year at Rocky.
Shortly after that, everyone starting filtering back and Brian & I packed up to get back to KC. Nick had taken good care of him and Brian expressed that he had a great time... it was his first group run and I'm hoping that he'll hook up with the SLUGS when he gets back to St Louis.

When we got back to KC, it was brunch time at Mac and Angela's.. we were celebrating Abby's birthday and then in the afternoon they were going to go pet baby cows at the Shatto Farm. Mac & Angela made an awesome fruit salad and roasted veggies, which really hit the spot after the run. The best part of the day was seeing the expression on Abby's face when Angela brought out her big present... we had all chipped in on a Kitchen Aid mixer. Abby had been dropping hints and out and out pleading for one for awhile now, so she was a bit overwhelmed. It was sweet!

On Sunday, Gary announced the formation of a new trail running group based in Lawrence... the Lawrence Trail Hawks! I figured since I run in Lawrence at least 3 times a week, this is the trail group for me. I was the first KC member and my trail name is "lil' big hawk"... Gary has been assigning names to everyone as they join. We're going to clean up the Clinton lake trails on Saturday in time for next week's races. I'm really excited about this group.. should be a good time with good people!

Rockin K trail marathon April 4 2009

2009-04-08T10:22:00.003-05:00

Bless me father for I have sinned. I have ignored one of the cardinal rules of running..... Respect the distance. Since Rocky Raccoon I have been feeling kinda cocky.. nay.. very cocky.... I mean I finished a 100 miler and in fairly good shape too.. that means I'm kinda badass, right? HAH!
I signed up for Rockin' K back in February... ever since I started trail running I've been hearing stories about this race. Gary Henry is one of the biggest pushers of the race, he kept telling me (and anyone else who might listen) how gorgeous and fun but tough Rockin K is. I heard stories about chest high stream crossings in 14 degree weather, I heard that the numbers are actually ear tags from cows, but I also heard about how well the RD's Stacy and Phil Sheridan will treat you and how well taken care of you will be. I think I also heard something about it being a tough course, but somewhere that must have slipped my mind.

I signed up for the marathon instead of the 50 miler since the Freestate 100k is only 3 weeks away and I had also heard stories about how difficult it is to head out on the second lap at this race. There was a lot of Kansas City people heading out, most were doing the marathon but a few hardy souls went for the 50. My ultra buddy Nick did the 50, he's trying to do 30 ultras before he turns 30 so he has to take advantage of every ultra he can. The week of the race, I sinned... I thought to myself, "it's ONLY a marathon.. no big deal.. I won't even bother to taper for this, after all I do 30 mile training runs regularly" BAD COLEEN! BAD! I did my regular shorter runs during the week, cranked incline treadmill power hikes , started working out using the rowing machine and to top it off on Wednesday I did a 20 miler. My only concession to the race was taking Friday off. Unfortunately due to my hectic, crazy weekend which I already blogged about, I wasn't able to drive down to the race until the morning off... so off I went at 3 am with only 3 hours of sleep and a heavy training week in my legs.
A thermos of coffee and 3.5 hours later, I was parking at Kanopolis State park and getting my packet from Nick and Laurie who had so graciously picked it up for me the night before. I checked in and stood around the fire for awhile talking with anyone in range. (Coffee makes me kinda chatty). At this point RD Stacy Sheridan grabbed me and told me that she stuck some extra RawRevolution Vegan bars in my race bag... she was concerned that there wouldn't be enough for me to eat at the aid stations..... I was blown away. Not only did this delightful woman know that I was vegan, she was truly worried that I would go hungry. WOAH! And then to top it off, she informed me that they had made up a batch of vegan bean soup for the finish line too. I felt like a rockstar!!! In a happy daze, I wandered out of the camp shelter to the start line.. Phil gave us some instructions like... follow striped flags on the way out and checkered flags on the way in.. got it!
We took off on a small section of pavement before turning onto the trails.. it was a gorgeous morning... sunny, windy, a bit cool but it was supposed to be in the 60's later on. I was wearing a skirt, short sleeve Atayne shirt, Moeben armwarmers and a lightweight long sleeve Atayne shirt over it all. The trail was in very good shape for just having gotten snowed on earlier in the week... there was some muddy sections but nothing ridiculous. It was amazing how just 3.5 hours away from Kansas City, the trails were so very different.... the soil was much more like Colorado and even the rock formations were very Garden of the Gods like. It was a great morning to be running with friends, I started out with Laurie but at some point she dropped back and was running with Nick and I ended up in a threesome with Deb and Debbie. We were moving together well and enjoying each others company and ended up sticking together the whole race. There were lots of water crossings, some were jump able, some were most definitely NOT, and most were also very muddy. I was wearing my Drymax max pro socks, I had been warned that the feet would be wet most of the day, and when I peeled them off after the race, the socks were muddy, soaked and gross but my feet were blister free! YES!
The course is wide open, lots of prairie, rolling hills and open bluffs and unfortunately for us, wind, and it was howling. As we were going through one farm gate, a gust of wind blew me into a barbed wire wrapped fence post and I skewered my hip. I was pretty sure my last tetanus shot was still valid so I didn't panic, but it did bruise up nicely.
The first 13.1 miles went quickly with lots of talking with old friends and new runners and marveling at the gorgeousness. The first manned aid station was at 13 miles and we quickly refilled water packs, I grabbed some oranges, and bananas and also hit the bathroom. Since the aid station is in the middle of nowhere, they had a camp toilet set up... a small tent with a toilet set on a stand and a bag. I had never pooped in a bag before! I had been warned that the bathroom had already blown over a few times, so I took care of business super fast. We headed out on a loop section that would bring us back to the same aid station in 5 miles, The Debs and i picked up Gary at the aid station and he ran with us for awhile. It's always fun to run with Gary, he tells great stories and he'll sprint ahead to take pictures and then join us again and then do it again and again, he's also done the race enough times that he knows the nitty, gritty details. The 5 mile loop section was ridiculously windy.. windy enough that many times it would literally blow me off the trail and we started joking about loading me up with rocks to hold me down. It also had some of the most amazing scenery and killer climbs too. Definitely the best part of the race!
By the time we hit the aid station again, my legs were feeling pretty toasted and the wind was sapping our energy. We loaded up with food and water again and headed for the last 8 miles. By this point we were walking up all the hills, the wind was not giving us any breaks and it seemed like it was always in our faces. The Debs really got me through the last section, my legs were total and complete toast, my right hip were I had run into the barbed wire was stiffening up, and the wind had sucked all life out of me. We tried to encourage each other and just keep moving forward.
When we reached the last big water crossing, it was deep, deep and moving along quickly. Debbie is quite a bit taller then me and volunteered to go first.. if it came to her chest, I was going to find a beaver damn to cross instead. Luckily it only came to her hips so Deb and I waded in... it was frigid but felt awesome on the legs, the water came up halfway between my waist and armpits so luckily no swimming for me! I was so tired by this point that I just wanted to be done.. this marathon was kicking my ass. It was about this point that any cockiness had washed away and I realized the folly of my sins. Respect the distance.. and LISTEN when people tell you it's a difficult course. I finished in 5:49, and I was more tired after 26.2 then after any of the 50ks.

That said, I can't wait to do it again next year... but I will be smarter and more prepared! It is an amazingly gorgeous course, it was VERY well marked, the aid stations were excellent, the volunteers rocked my world, and the race directors rule! What more can you want from a race? (And for the record, I totally have a crush on Phil and Stacy Sheridan.. they rule!!)
I spent an hour or so hanging out at the finish line, sharing stories, relaxing and eating 3, or maybe 4 bowls of vegan black bean soup. It was great to see everyone either coming in to the finish or loading up to go back out. Nick looked great when he came in at the end of his first loop and finished the 50, thanks to Laurie's help and some pacing from his dog Roxy. It was with great reluctance that I packed up to head back to KC... I could have spent all afternoon talking with the runners and helpers.

The pictures are courtesy of Gary Henry and many more can be found at his website ultrastory.com along with lots of other ultra running info!

crazy busy

2009-04-06T12:30:00.003-05:00

Last week was one of the crazy ones.. every once in a while I get a week where it seems like I don't sit down and this was once of them. At least training has been going well, on Wednesday I went for a 20 mile run with Christy at Clinton Lake. In hindsight, not one of my smartest moves.. I knew I was running a marathon at Rockin K on Saturday, but I figured since I was only using it as a training run, I wouldn't bother to taper or even slightly rest for it. (stoopid, stoopid) Christy and I had a great time, it was nice weather and the trails were only mildly muddy.

As we were running along we were discussing the fact that it was April Fools Day and one of us came up with the idea of making some prank phone calls while out on the run. Somehow in the haze of endorphins this seemed like the BEST IDEA EVER! So when we got to the 10 mile turn around we called one of our running friends, Gary. Now as a bit of background, Gary is notorious for playing awful pranks on his poor wife on April Fools Day, so we figured we'd test things out on him and try and get some revenge for poor Karen. I called his work number and commenced with hysteria when he picked up.. I told him that Christy had fallen and blown out her knee and she couldn't walk, I couldn't get her off the trails and I didn't know what to do. Gary remained very calm, telling me to call 911 and get an ambulance out, and when I continued to be hysterical, offered to jump in his car and come get us. At that point we revealed the joke and thanked him for his willingness to come rescue us! It's nice to know that if there really was a problem I have friends to rely on! Gary took it in good grace and we told him it was our revenge for Karen.. we then called Karen and told her what we had done. She was very appreciative that someone had FINALLY gotten him! Buoyed by our success with Gary, we moved on to my husband... Christy called and told him I had fallen and there was bone showing and I was refusing to go to the hospital. I couldn't hold out long when she handed the phone to me and I let the cat out of the bag real quick. Let's just say that he wasn't as amused as Gary... and rightfully so! That wasn't enough so we did the same thing to Christy's boy friend and unfortunately I talked a bit too long while spinning my yarn.. long enough that he was able to leave the gym where he was working out and get in his car to head to Lawrence. He wasn't very amused either when the joke was revealed. Needless to say we both felt really bad for putting some really great guys through that trauma. Next year I'll just do the fake crap on the pillow trick.

Anyway the run went great, it took us a bit longer then usual because we spent so much time talking on the phone instead of running! As we were a mile from the cars we ran into the usual Wednesday night group run including poor Gary so we got to give him a hug and apologize in person. He then tried to talk us into playing a prank on Karen. The man is incorrigible!! Kristen turned around and ran back with us to the cars and we got a chance to hear all about her new lab puppy.. which meant there was much squealing on the trails. She can't wait till the puppy is old enough to run with!

Thursday afternoon I spent at the gym with my friend Angela learning how to use the rowing machine properly. Angela rowed for Sarah Lawrence so I figured if anyone could show me how to get the most out of the machine it was her! I have found that I don't really like spending much time in the weight room so rowing a few times a week will work my core and arms and legs in addition to giving me a cardio workout too. I can go to the gym at 6 am, get in an hour of rowing and still run in the evenings. Done right, that machine is an ass kicker! After Angela schooled me good, we went to help her wife (Mac) hang up her paintings for an art opening on Saturday... I got to use a cute 5 lb sledgehammer to drive nails into brick... I LOVE playing with power tools and big hammers!!

Friday night was First Fridays in the Crossroads Art District and Angela and my friend Slimm combined forces and had an amazing exhibition of rock photography. They are both incredibly talented and it was fascinating to see some of the same bands shot by each of them. It was a big ol' party and lots of my favorite people were there and then my favorite band played... The Gaslights have the sexiest bass player ever! (and lucky for me, I get to wake up next to him every morning! woot!) The Gaslights put on an amazing show.. some new songs, some old favorites and 2 covers... you've never heard "Money Changes Everything" by Cyndi Lauper until you've heard it sung by Abby... it'll blow your hair right off and break your heart at the same time. And one of the most exciting parts of the night came when Mac talked Michelle, the owner of Davey's into booking our band for a show in August! Our very first one!!! YAY! Happiness and total terror all at the same time. I had to scoot home as early as possible so I could get up at 2:30 am and drive 3.5 hours to Kanopolis State Park to race (race report coming soon).

Saturday I got up at 2:30, drove 3.5 hours, did the race thing, slurped down a few bowls of vegan black bean soup and raced 3.5 hours back to Kansas City, jumped in the shower and got ready for another evening of chaos. First off we headed to Mac's art opening at the Brick.. she paints these huge canvases... all abstract, gorgeous with soothing colours. She has 3 of them I could see on my walls. Unfortunately we couldn't stay for long because we had to be our friend Louise's 40th birthday party at 7:30. Off we went to Lenexa, had a few beers, a lot of laughs and a great time and had to scoot out of there a bit before 9 to make it to Czar Bar where the Gaslights were playing again. Another fun evening with lots of great people, amazing music and a beer or 2. By the time the show had wrapped up, I was dead on my feet. I had been up for 23 hours, driven 7 hours, run a marathon, and stood around in high heels all night. Put a fork in me, I was done. I managed to roll into bed at exactly the same time I had gotten out that morning.
Needless to say I spent most of Sunday sleeping in and napping and then napping some more. I also spent some time playing my bass... terror is a great motivator! I had a great weekend but I'm really glad every weekend isn't like that.. I'm too old for it!

August 22-23 2009....

2009-03-24T12:23:00.003-05:00

... I will be hauling my ass over Hope Pass twice! Yep, I decided to do Leadville this year. Not entirely sure I was sober or sane when I made this choice, but why not! Unfortunately after living in Kansas for 9 years I am now a flatlander and will have to figure out a work around to training on BIG, LONG hills. I will be going to Leadville in June to stay with my friends Mac & Angela, so a week of training on the course will be good and I guess this also means my parents will be seeing me a whole bunch this summer too! If I can go run up and down Pikes Peak a bunch of times that should help too, oh yeah, and lots of gym work. PHEW. This is going to be MUCH more intense training then Rocky Raccoon!
And the best part is that I get to do all my recovery in Australia. Erik & I are headed to OZ to visit his family and take a much needed vacation together. So for 4 1/2 weeks we'll be backpacking around visiting friends and family down under. Happy Dance!!!

HAPPY HAPPY SPRING!

2009-03-22T17:34:00.004-05:00

It officially turned spring on Friday at 6:44 am and while I wasn't QUITE on on the trails yet, I was only off by 30 minutes. My friend Christy and I decided there was no better way to spend the vernal equinox then doing a 30 miler on our favorite trails at Clinton Lake. It was a bit chilly when we started out so we were both sporting our Moeben sleeves and I was trying out a new shirt by Atayne made from recycled plastic bottles and coconut shells. It's really crazy that you can take 2 things like hard plastic bottles and coconut shells and make a really soft, amazing, wicking shirt from it! Technology is so cool! And the shirt is darn cool too, I'm totally ordering a few more and running in them all summer, it felt like I wasn't even wearing a shirt.
I was also giving my Drymax Maximum Protection socks a true test.

We started out easy and I felt awesome, there is nothing better then a good run after a spate of bad ones! My legs felt amazing and even the hills felt easy (if only EVERY run was like this!) We spent the day talking and laughing and gossiping. The nice thing about Christy is that she notices things like I do on the trails.... when I stopped to look at some pretty feathers or a bunch of honeycombs on the ground, she doesn't think I'm insane for getting excited! At mile 12 we stopped and did some crossfit workouts on the mtn. bike trials course, after we completed a bunch of workouts we realized what idiots we were being.. we still had 18 miles to run. Duh!, Should have done the workouts at the end! This was the longest run Christy had done since September when she ran the Flatrock 50K, she had spent all winter trying to diagnose a knee problem and taking time off for that and this was my longest since Rocky Raccoon so we just took it easy. I was using homemade gel, from a recipe I got off the ultra list and it was great! It tasted great and I never had a sugar crash... cheaper, tastier and better nutritionally then the commercial gels.

The police had blocked off the roads in the park and were practicing defensive driving so the soundtrack to our run was squealing tires, we even stopped and chatted with one of the cops for awhile ... they were pretty excited to be driving upwards of 100 MPH, so we used EXTREME caution while crossing the roads in the park all day. The temps fluctuated all day from "perfect short sleeve" weather to "glad I had the arm warmers on" weather and the mud was only bad in the last mile. All in all it was a glorious day on the trails, a perfect way to greet spring! My feet ended the 30 miles with nary a hot spot or blister so I am going to confidently give Drymax socks 2 thumbs up! I am going to buy a few more pairs of the maximum protection socks since Bob from Drymax recommends those for anything above the marathon distance and I will wear the other styles for shorter runs. This training run was all about trying new stuff before I used it in a race and I'm excited to get things dialed in!

Saturday was a group run out at Clinton Lake and I had originally thought I would do 20, but due to some commitments at home and work I had to cut it back to 10, but it was nice to run with some of the usual suspects. I started out fast and had a bit of a chat with Jim Megerson, who is always a great conversationalist but after about 2 miles my tired legs started to whine at me and I dropped back to a group with Nick and Laurie who were planning on doing 30. I like the 30 mile pace quite a bit better!! It was with much regret in my heart that I left the group and headed back to the car at Lands End.. I really wanted to do more miles but, life happens sometimes. I hooked up with Pat in the last 2 miles and enjoyed running in with him, he splits his training between running and the bike and I always enjoy hearing cycling stories, since in another life I did race bikes. I motored back to KC and finished my day doing boring stuff like working and cleaning the house, and laughing at my friends basketball obsessions.

Sunday is my day off and I spent it at Shawnee Mission Park hiking with my husband, friends and dogs. We dodged plenty of mountain bikers and even a few runners but no one I recognized. It was great to relax the legs and spend time with another group of friends... it was the first time they had been on the trails at SMP and everyone really enjoyed them. We did the 4.5 mile loop and by the end the doggies were whupped, a splash in the lake was in order for them after the hike. A big salad on the porch with a glass of wine and good conversation with the husband and our house guest Rhonda rounded out the evening. I couldn't have asked for a better spring kick off.

Frustrating Weekend

2009-03-15T16:58:00.002-05:00

I really hate when a weekend of running goes all to hell. I usually have Fridays off so I try and plan that day for my really long run. This Friday I had planned on a 30 miler, the weather was supposed to be in the upper 40s and sunny, but when I hit the Clinton Lake trails the mud was ridiculous. I briefly thought about turning around and hitting the River Trails instead, but the thought of doing 30 on those had me bored to tears already. I also figured that after the first few miles things would get better and I was kinda right, after the first 5 miles things were a bit better.. like just muddy, shoe caking mud as opposed to rivers of flowing mud & bogs. I just kept slogging along, walking the worst of it, and running the higher sections that were dry. After a few hours of this I decided that there was NO WAY I was going to bang out 30 today, so I cut it to 20 and called it a day. I did see some coyotes run across the trail at one point and I was seriously bummed I didn't have my camera phone handy.
The best part of the day was wearing my new Moeben sleeves in giraffe print, it was the perfect temperature for them, when the sun was un- shadowed and I was moving quickly I just pulled them down a bit and when I was slogging through mud puddles I yanked 'em back up. I foresee wearing these A LOT! Shannon was nice enough to send me a big box of sleeves to try out after I talked to her at Rocky Raccoon, and she also included 1 of her new running skirts which I am really excited to try.. if only the weather would co-operate! I am going to be VERY bright on the trails this year, I have bright tiedye, giraffe, cheetah, bright pink, white, and graffiti prints..... if I ever get lost just tell the rescue helicopter to look for the bright spots of colour.
Saturday morning I woke up at 5 to meet up with the usual group run at Clinton Lake again, I figured on getting in 20 again even with the horrid mud. But when I woke up my husband to tell him I was leaving and I would be in to work at 4, he was sick, sick, sick, so I bagged the run and told him I would work all day so he could just sleep and get better. So I spent 12 hours on my feet, not exactly the kind of feet time I had planned but it was totally worth it to let Erik sleep and heal.
Normally Sunday is my day off from running, it is also the only day of the week Erik and I have off together so instead of running, he and I and the dog and some friends usually go for a hike and then we spend the day together. This morning the hike was canceled since Erik was still sick and in bed, so I took got up early to get in a run instead. I was avoiding Clinton so instead I went to the River Trails planning on 20. My guts and legs had something else planned. I haven't had such an awful run in months and months. My guts were all screwed up and I had to keep wandering off into the bushes and my legs were NOT interested in moving... literally at times I would find myself just slowing to a walk for no reason. I would zone off for a moment and bam! I was walking again. It just sucked. I got to see a bunch of deer and a HUGE hawk of some sort, I swear when he took flight his wingspan was as big as me! I cut the run short at 8 miles and headed home in misery. At least my during the week training went well this week!! Oh well, I'll just shoot for 30 next Friday, and hope we will get NO rain (or snow) between now and then. On a happy note, I did wear my Drymax socks and have NO blisters to report, but I'm still waiting to really test them with a long run. They were very comfortable and I didn't find myself thinking about my feet as I sometimes do during a run so that's a hopeful sign.

Foot Grossness

2009-03-11T10:18:00.000-05:00

My feet have always been kinda gross. I was cursed? blessed? with my dad's big toe, a very manly looking fat toe, great for running but not so attractive on a girl wearing sandals or peep toe shoes. My feet are also kinda smelly (my husband argues for the word "very" instead of "kinda" but whatever) and I have a tendency towards big calluses. When I started running, my feet upped the gross factor.. I have struggled with blister problems on long runs from the get go, so taping and lubing my feet became part of the morning ritual. In spite of the taping, lubing, and sock experimentation I regularly lost toenails and learned to not flinch when lancing blisters. I also stopped wearing sandals and started painting all my toenails black and learned how to use nailpolish to "paint" toenails where there were none.

Rocky Raccoon took my feet to a whole new level. I know there were/are many people whose feet were MUCH worse, but holy crap my feet were hurting. I wore Injinji socks for the first 60 miles and after that I switched to Balega socks, but nothing seemed to help. I had to stop and tape up blisters a few times. My post race recovery would have been pretty quick if it hadn't been for the blisters and swollen feet.. I couldn't even get real shoes on my feet for about 5 days. Now, a month later my feet are still peeling and shedding ridiculous amounts of skin.. the other day I peeled off a flap of skin and a toenail came with it! It's beyond nasty.. and I will refrain from posting pictures. Lucky for me, a very nice man named Bob read my Rocky Raccoon race report, felt bad for my tales of foot woes and emailed me. Bob works for DryMax socks, thought he could help me and so very generously offered to send me some socks to try. He asked that I refrain from taping and lubing my feet while wearing Drymax socks.... and all I could think is "Woah! That means I could sleep in an extra 10 minutes!" YES! (Although at this point if someone told me goat's blood would keep blisters at bay, I'd be out back with a knife and a whetstone)

So on Saturday my mailwomen delivered a big box of socks to me... actually, I had to go to her truck to get the box since Otis (my dog) was outside and she was terrified of him. Unfortunately this delivery took place AFTER my long run, but it gave me a chance to inspect the heck out of the socks. I was NOT expecting the amount of stuff I got! I got trail running socks (which are NOT white.. yay!), hot weather running socks, cold weather socks (hoping not to use these for awhile), lite mesh, maximum protection running, and plain old ordinary running socks. I have very small feet and usually socks end up being too big for my feet, which is why I try and buy kids sizes when I can (no smart ass remarks Travis!) but these size smalls are actually size small!! I was so excited! No bunching up or the heel coming halfway up my calf! I checked out the book that I got with the package and it sounds like they thought of everything, moisture control from the dual layers, no seams on the inside, odor control (yes!) and the arch band which helps hold the sock in place.

So I'm going to use these Drymax socks exclusively for awhile to see if they really are as great as I have heard, I have the Rockin K trail marathon in a few weeks that should give them a good test.. some chest high stream crossings should get the feet nice and wet which is usually a recipe for blisters and then the FreeState 100K in April which is sure to include some mud and multiple small stream crossings. And of course lots and lots of long training runs in mud and, hopefully if the weather would co-operate, sweaty feet. I'm going to pack away my bag of blister care and tape and lube in hopes that these socks will save my feet! I will be back to report on 'em!

"Beyond the Epic Run" movie review

2009-03-07T18:31:00.006-06:00

I saw this movie weeks ago and promised I'd review it, but then life promptly got in the way. It's very annoying when things don't go exactly as I want them to... things like winning the lottery or suddenly becoming a "front of the packer" in my races! But I digress...

Beyond the Epic Run is opening in 12 cities this spring and if you enjoy documentary types of movies all about people pushing to the limit then this is very much worth your time and money. The movie tracks a husband and wife running through 37 countries, 25,000 miles over 5 years, just Serge running and Nicole riding a motorcycle next to him carrying all their gear. Most of the footage is what Serge and Nicole took themselves along the way interspersed with scenery footage taken later. In so many ways this was an incredible, inspiring movie but in other ways it didn't get deep enough into the nitty gritty for me. They went though some terrible hardships, both of them contracted malaria and Nicole almost died, they were robbed, they had to re route at times to avoid civil wars, they lost their charity sponsorship, Serge got hit by a car, and on and on. But for me, as a sick & depraved ultrarunner, I was looking for the blistered feet and the complete breakdown of body and soul, which was touched on but not deep enough for me. It's an epic adventure movie rather then a running movie, and since I showed up expecting a running movie it threw me for a bit.
My only other complaint had to do with the "experts" that peppered the movie. The director pulled in different doctors, runners, etc to give short "oh wow isn't that amazing" speeches, but really the movie doesn't need it. The level of running that Serge did doesn't need a "celebrity" runner to point it out.. it speaks on its own. The guy went through 64 pairs of running shoes, 100 pairs of socks and ran essentially 970 marathons, (that's a marathon every other day for 5 years!!) That's a level of dedication and crazy I can only dream about.
The scenery was breathtaking and it made me want to rush right out and buy a bunch of plane tickets to places I never thought I'd want to visit. The sold all their possessions to take this journey, but wow would it be worth it!
The pure, raw emotion in this movie was absolutely inspiring. Seriously, see this movie if it comes to your town but go in knowing that it is an amazing adventure movie and not a movie about running... which means it's safe to take non running friends and family too!

2009-02-17T12:20:00.003-06:00

I've spent the last week sitting on my butt tending to my blisters and eating pretty much every thing in sight. My husband learned quickly not to leave any food lying around unattended! I felt great from the ankles up, but my feet were blistered and swollen for about 4 days, so easy dog walks were about the most exercise I got (and trips to the fridge). I also drank a goodly amount of beer which contributed to my recovery, and I'm sure I put on a few pounds this week but I don't care!!
Saturday I spent the day volunteering at the Psycho Wyco Trail Race. I had a great time hanging out at the Wyco Triangle Aid Station filling bottles, handing out food, ringing a cowbell and yelling myself hoarse. It felt great to give a little bit back in the form of help and encouragement. I love dealing with happy trail runners! Our station was voted as the most nosiest which isn't too surprising with my big mouth around, I've never been accused of being quiet. Psycho Wyco is a super fun but hard race that deceives many people... there are some ridiculous hills at this park.. you'll never say Kansas is flat after this race. We also have a special brand of mud that was out in full force for this years race. It's a 10.35 mile loop and there was a 10 mile race, 20 mile and 50K all going on at the same time. The 10 mile people got away pretty easy, as most of the mud was still frozen first thing in the morning, but by the time the sun had come up and 250 runners had trampled through once, it was super sloppy, slippy going. We witnessed some spectacular falls and impressive mud decorations.

Last year this race was my first 20 miler and I had so very much fun, but honestly this year I was very happy to be behind the aid station. There was a dead raccoon on part of the course and I had to hike over and get Dick Ross our wonderful photographer to get a shot of me with it, It's kinda hard to see but my foot is on the poor things carcass... I title this one.. Yeah, I kicked the crap out of Rocky Raccoon. (notice I'm wearing both my sweatshirt and belt buckle from RR)

Monday I went for my first run, I thought I would do an easy 9 miles and be fine. HA! Sometimes I crack myself up.... my legs were VERY tired and I found myself panting like I was running sprints. Yeah, guess I'm nowhere near recovered! So instead I ran 4.5 miles and then walked another 2.5 at a pretty brisk pace. I'll just keep taking it easy until I feel good again, I'm not starting another big training cycle for awhile anyway. Next week however, I'm going to start a lifting program, I'd love to do crossfit but I can't afford the $250 a month that our local crossfit gym charges so I'll just steal some of their workouts to do on my own.

Rocky Raccoon 100 miler.. the full report

2009-02-10T10:58:00.005-06:00

Nick and I were joking that the best race report goes something like this: I ran.. it was great.. it sucked.. it was great.. I finished. That pretty much sums things up, but since I tend toward the wordy, and it is my first 100 miler I can't stop there.

I left Kansas City Thursday afternoon in a van with my crew chief Christy , head pacer Debbie and official photographer James... (yes, I travel with an entourage). We were also caravaning down with Karen, who is Gary Henry's wife/crew/and support system. It was a pretty uneventful drive except for the screwy on/off ramps in Texas... they are like 2 ft long! I was only a mile into Texas and it was already trying to kill me.. it made me pretty nervous for the future. It's about an 11 hour drive which meant we rolled into Huntsville about 2 am.. I immediately fell into a pretty comfortable hotel bed with instructions that if anyone woke me up early I would kill them. About 9 am we all started stirring and I promptly started drinking water and eating. We headed over to Starbucks..... my crew was much happier once they were well caffeinated, I was just pleased that they had a nice selection of herbal teas to chose from.

After coffee infusions we headed to the park to check out the trails and the start/finish area. We met up with Nick and Laurie who had gotten into Huntsville about 5 am and we all ran a slow, easy, fun 4 miles.. the weather was gorgeous and I was feeling awesome and surprisingly very calm. After the run we hung out at the Kansas City contingent camp shelter that was conveniently located just yards from the start. I spent the afternoon eating and laying down until Nick and I headed back to the park for the packet pickup/briefing and dinner. It was pretty fun to hang out and watch everyone greet each other with such enthusiasm.. I hope that eventually I get to the point where I know lots of people at these races. We had a big Kansas City group, about 10 of us, so at least I wasn't hanging by myself. I was VERY appreciative that the dinner had plenty of veggie options..even the garlic bread was made with olive oil and not butter! After dinner Nick and I headed back to the hotel, & when I walked to my room, my crew had gotten into the margaritas and there were 4 "naked" people in the bed!! Cracked me right up and helped dispell any lingering nervousness.

I got all my stuff ready and organized and then headed to bed... I ended up with my very own hotel room for the night so I slept as well as could be expected. I woke up at 3:30 before the alarm even went off, got dressed (skirt, trail nerds shirt, dirty girl gaiters, rainbow stripe injinji socks, la sportiva shoes) , ate, packed up the car and we headed off to the park. We parked at KC central and hung around while Vicki (one of the other runner's wife) made breakfast for anyone that wanted it. It helped to be around a bunch of other nervous runners. As I headed off to the bathrooms, I realized that I had forgotten to check in and started to panic a bit, but crew chief extraordinare Christy checked me in while I was in the bathroom. I felt like such a rockstar! We were standing around talking and taking pictures when all of a sudden the mass of runners started to move.. the race had started! We never even heard the word GO!

It was a slow start, with 239 runners funneling into the single track, we were walking for a few minutes but that was a good thing.. I was determined not to go out fast. HA! It was really cool to see the huge long conga line of headlamps dancing through the trees. Kansas Citians Nick, Danny & I were running together, and decided we'd stay together for as long as possible. It was Nick and I's first 100 attempt and Danny had DNF'd a 100 before so we figured as much support we could gather from each other the better off we'd be.

The first lap went by really fast, the weather was still fairly cool and we were having a great time talking and laughing with other runners and enjoying the course. Danny was wearing his Garmin and would let us know when a mile had passed by singing "99 miles to go" to the tune of 100 bottle of beer on the wall. It was hilarious to us, but I imagined by say, mile 50 we'd be ready to kill. We reminded each other to eat and take salt caps, but at one point we realized that we were on pace to finish the first 20 mile loop in under 4 hours which for us, was stupidly fast. We slowed down quite a bit, but it was difficult to rein ourselves in when it was so nice out and we were enjoying the run so much.
At the end of the first lap I got a chance to run and talk with Shannon, the owner of Moeben sleeves, she was wearing arm sleeves, leg sleeves and the coolest camo skirt! She explained to me that she was testing out the leg sleeves and skirt before they were available for retail, I love the fact that she personally tests her stuff on the same courses that we all run on. You don't get that sort of attention to detail with big corporate companies, and she also donates a portion of every sale to charity. I see her ads in all the running magazines and my only complaint is that she should be in her own ads, she is adorable and was so very nice.

We finished the first lap in 4 hours and 36 seconds.. faster then I wanted but oh well! My wonderful crew filled up my water, forced some food down me, offered me tons of encouragement and got me back on my way quickly. It was starting to get pretty hot and we slowed down quite a bit. The predicted high was in the upper 70's and the humidity was darn high, so unfortunately my stomach started to go south about halfway though the 2nd loop, Nick was doing some dry heaves too. The talking and laughing was a bit less on this loop and we all commented that the 6 mile section of out and back seemed REALLY long this time. At the Dam Road aid station one of the workers commented " you know you're an ultra runner when you are jealous of other people's bodily functions" I laughed and laughed since I hadn't yet been able to take a crap and it was pissing me off. I hit the first wall right about 30 miles in, and did some walking but then we saw an armadillo cross the trail in front of us which got us all excited and revived us a bit. We were told that when scared, armadillos can jump straight in the air up to 4 ft, so we were kinda hoping for a demonstration, but alas he was just getting the hell out of the way of the crazy runners.

When we got back to the start, I took the time to tape up some hot spots that were starting on my feet. My stomach was still feeling bad so I was balking at eating, but Christy was adamant about me getting some calories. I wish I had been smart enough to say to her that I was feeling nauseous because I had plenty of ginger drinks and ginger chews that would have helped settle the guts, instead I was already so brain dead I just told her I didn't want to eat. We started on our 3rd loop still together but that didn't last long.. Nick was feeling good and he took off right away and Danny took off soon afterwards. My stomach was keeping me from being able to run quickly so I simply put on the headphones and zoned. I knew I couldn't take too long to do this lap since I had forgotten to pick up my headlamp and I wouldn't see my crew for another 16 miles. I had a very small light in my nathan pack, but I would have to move pretty slow to use it. I was dreading the 6 mile loop by myself but the music helped and in the last few miles of that section I ran into Gary Henry who was looking great and running well, unfortunately I was not able to keep up with him for long but it was nice to see a friendly face for a few minutes. When I hit the Dam road Aid Station the 2nd time on this loop I heard someone say they had veggie burgers and as the temps were dropping, food suddenly started sounding good. I grabbed half of one and took off, hoping the dark would hold off for another 3.2 miles. I choked about 1/4 of the veggie burger down and it worked like a charm, my pace picked up and I hit my crew with just a few minutes of light to spare. I ate some soba noodle soup that Christy had whipped up for me, grabbed my headlamp and told my pacer Debbie to get ready to run. I could pick up a pacer starting at 60 miles and we were 4 short miles away from that. The 4 mile section from the Park Road Aid Station to the Start/Finish was my favorite section of the course, for some reason I could run this section quickly and it always seemed a lot shorter then 4 miles.

At 60 miles I taped up some more blisters, changed my shoes and socks and ate a bunch of oatmeal that Christy had ready for me. I also took an Advil for the first time, I don't like to take medicine of any sort usually, but this was an exception, and I ended up taking about 5 total during the race.. they were lifesavers!! Debbie and I took off and I explained to her that I might be walking a bit until the Advil kicked in since my blisters were feeling pretty ouchy.. not 1/2 a mile down the road the first one exploded and caused me to limp and swear loudly for a bit. My stomach was feeling great since the sun had gone down and my mood was much improved too. Debbie and I talked and laughed and encouraged everyone we passed. Sometimes she was in front, sometimes behind me, sometimes I talked and sometimes I put my headphones on and ignored everything. Even when I was listening to music it was still comforting to know that she was there... I like running at night by myself, but running with someone this late in the game helped keep me steady. I probably would have walked more if she hadn't been there. (although I walk really, really fast so I don't lose that much time when I do) Once again the 6 mile stretch was the hardest, and I can't wait to do it again next year and kick that section's ass! At this point I think I was peeing every 5 minutes and all modesty had gone right out the window. At the beginning of the race I would step off the trail a few feet and turn my back, by the end I was lucky if I made it 1 step off the trail... I was just jealous I couldn't make the cool squiggly marks I kept seeing in the dust! Debbie was awesome and really helped get me through what I thought would be the hardest 20 mile loop, but she made it almost easy! We ran into Gabe and his pacer Rick on this loop and took a minute to snap some pictures.. Gabe was having some awful back problems and was just gutting it out with Rick's help. Those 2 are some of our fastest guys in our area and it was nice to get their encouragement.

At the end of this loop Christy took over the pacing duties from Debbie, and once I started the last 20 miles I knew that short of total disaster there was no way I wouldn't finish. I was not going to hit my 24 hour goal, but I wasn't going to be too terribly off. I explained to Christy that I might be walking an awful lot this last lap but she was good at making me run when all I wanted to do was walk. The 6 mile section ended up being not as bad as I anticipated, knowing that it was the last time I had to do it helped and we also hooked up with a guy named Wayne and his pacer. They were good company and we stuck together for about 4 miles sharing stories and laughing. When we lost them it was just a few super long miles back to the Dam Road aid station and I kept telling myself to be sure to ask for Advil when we got there and to pick up some more veggie burger. Just before we got to the aid station we ran into Nick and his pacer Laurie, Nick had had an allergic reaction to something that made his eyes swell almost totally shut and he had to spend some time at Medical. Benadryl helped with some of the swelling but made him sleepy so they were moving pretty slow when we saw them.

When we hit Dam Road for the last time (!) , I totally forgot to ask for Advil and then both Christy's and my packs accidentally got filled with Gatorade instead of water. Of course we didn't realize it until a good 1/2 mile or more down the road, I tried to drink a bit of it, but my stomach sloshed warningly so I stopped. The 3.2 miles to the next aid station was the longest, hardest of the race. I had nothing to drink, which meant that I had nothing to wash down any food so I couldn't eat, my blisters were killing me.. it was a VERY low point. Luckily Christy kept me moving, one foot in front of the other... but when we finally hit the Park Road Aid Station and my crew I sat down in a chair and cried. Christy dumped out the nasty gatorade and got me clean cool water, I took 2 Advil and ate a couple vegan oatmeal chocolate chip cookies which combined with coffee worked like rocket fuel for me.
We walked out of the aid station while I drank a cup of coffee and waited for everything to kick in... Christy kept me running at this point until I found my head again and the sun came up, which happened pretty much at once. At that point I pressed play on the iPod and started running and when I say running, I mean like 8 minute miles. I wasn't sure how much further I had to go, but I wanted to hit 25 hours. The next 2 miles or so was kind of a blur, but I know that Christy was running behind me yelling "on your left" as we were passing runners, I had absolutely no slow twitch muscles left, but my fast twitch ones were getting quite a workout. I started to slow near the end and then looked down at my watch and realized I had 1 minute to 25 hours so I gritted my teeth and flew. I passed the finish line at 25 hours and 27 seconds and I was yelling "Shit" the whole way.
Race Director Joe shook my hand and handed me the 2nd coolest hunk of metal I've ever gotten in my life (first being my wedding ring). With wobbly legs I walked over to our staging area and received hugs and love from all my friends.. I was doing pretty good until Christy hugged me, she was sobbing which set me right off. I walked away and took a minute to absorb what I had just done. I grabbed someones cell phone and called my husband and then called my dad. Before the race I made my dad pick a time that he thought I would finish in and not tell me... he picked 26 and 1/2 hours.. I was thrilled to have beaten it by a bunch since he pegged my 50 mile time. Sitting down was heaven and I had a front row seat to watch the other runners finish. We spent awhile trading stories and cheering other runners on, but then all too soon it was time to think about the 11 hour drive home.
I was pretty stiff and sore all day Sunday.. sitting in the car made it worse I think, but by Monday afternoon I was feeling great. My only lingering problem is swollen feet and blisters.. oh and the need to eat every 20 minutes.
I have a lot of things to work on for the next 100, things I will change and tweak, but for the most part I'm VERY pleased with how things went for my first. I can't wait to come back and do this one again next year. I had the world's best crew and I also received much help from other Kansas City area runners, pacers and crew.. I truly could not have done it without them. The race volunteers were also exceptional.. Dam Road Aid Station in particular holds a very special spot in my heart since it was my hardest place on the course. Those people were beyond helpful and comforting. My husband also gets a very special thank you for putting up with my craziness, he even listens to me talk incessantly about training and running and doesn't either a- fall asleep or b- throw something at my head. I'm a lucky girl!

Rocky Raccoon 100

2009-02-09T09:12:00.004-06:00

finished in 25 hours and 26 seconds! Full report coming soon!

2009-02-04T11:18:00.002-06:00

T-minus a few short days and counting until Rocky Raccoon! I have been out of my head scared for the last couple weeks, but on Monday night as I was lying in bed sleepless with the same old thoughts scrolling through my mind (What if I'm wearing the wrong shoes? What if I eat the wrong things? What if my headlamp blows up? What if.. What if... What if....???) I decided that instead of just tossing and turning that I would visualize. I've seen enough pictures of the course to have a pretty good idea of what things look like, so I visualized how I wanted things to go from the start of the race to the finish.. aid stations, nighttime, eating, everything. And amazingly enough it worked.. I fell asleep after the finish and I woke up feeling peaceful and excited instead of terrified and almost dreading it. I feel calm and confident and really excited in a good way.

I'm looking forward to spending time with all the wonderful Trail Nerds that are going down and meeting all sorts of new people. My crew is set and excited and I'm no longer second guessing every decision I've made. We're leaving tomorrow morning, so we can have all day Friday to check things out and do any last minute things.. I'm looking forward to exploring the park and maybe doing an easy 2-3 miler on Friday. Cross your fingers for me everyone!

2009-01-25T09:08:00.004-06:00

Last Friday I was able to talk 7 people into doing a super fun night run in the snow. I wanted to get in one more all night run before Rocky, so I conned 5 of the other Rocky runners and 2 just plain crazies to join me. We met at 11pm at Clinton Lake.. which technically was closed for the evening, so it gave the run a bit more of a "dangerous" thrill! The original plan was to bang out 24 miles and then go grab some breakfast somewhere, nap in our cars for 30 minutes or so and then join the regular Saturday morning group run for 10 more miles. The first wrench in the plans came when we tried to get to the trail access place where we planned to stash some water and provisions but the road was closed. So instead of doing a large 24 mile loop we decided to just do 2 10 mile loops and a short out and back section so we could grab aid out of our cars. The other wrench in the plans came the morning of the run.. Mother Nature decided to give us a nice new coating of fresh powder.. only a couple of inches but it slowed us down considerably.
We met up and got the loop plans worked out and started out.. temps were in the upper 20's so as long as we were moving we were OK, but if we stopped for too long the icy wind made things COLD. The plan was to stay together so we went out at an easy pace.. the footing was pretty slippery and the snow hid the rocks very well so a slow easy pace was needed. We had a few tumbles through out the night but luckily nothing serious. The moon was a gorgeous bright orange crescent rising through the trees, but it was hard to spend any time admiring it.. one wrong look and boom! You were gonna tumble on the slippery rocks. The run was filled with silly stories, songs and much Rocky discussion. 4 of us are first time 100 milers so we had lots of questions for Gary, who did it last year. Actually Gary DNF'd last year at Rocky so he's ready for revenge. After we finished the second 10 mile loop we decided to bag the last couple of miles, since we were all so darn cold.
We threw on some warmer clothes and headed to IHOP for some food and coffee! The waitress wasn't sure what to make of us.. bleary eyed and salt covered demanding much coffee. When Gary told her what we had been doing she simply raised an eyebrow, said "uh-huh" and walked away. I'm sure the overnight shift is filled with crazy people, so a bunch of night runners would be downright normal.
We warmed up, ate our fill and 4 of us headed back out to Clinton Lake. The 2 non Rocky runners went home to get sleep and 1 guy had his kids basketball game to get to. I curled up in a blanket and cranked the heat in my car and dozed for about 45 minutes until a friend knocked on my window. I put on dry shoes, hat and gloves and headed out with the group. I was amazed at how good I felt, at least for the first 6 miles... after that I was pretty wupped. I finished up the run with Christy and Lisa.. Christy was finally coming back from a knee injury and Lisa who had never run more than 5 miles before. We took it easy and engaged in much girl talk and enjoyed the run.
I headed for home as soon as we were done, and crawled into bed for a few hours of sleep before having to be at work at 4 pm. It was a super fun way to get in 30 miles and helped me realize just how much I like running at night. Of course running at night after having run ALL day will be a much different thing I'm sure. I'm still scared shitless, but oddly enough I'm also feeling pretty darn ready for Rocky.

yo-yo weekend

2009-01-11T20:10:00.005-06:00

Friday's are one of my days off and it turned out to be a beautiful, sunny, 50+ degree day here in KC. I spent 7 hours of it on the trails, and it was GREAT! I haven't done over 24 miles in a single run since Nathaniel's Run in mid-November, so it was good to get in 30 miles and break that mental barrier again. My cough was receding and it was so glorious out, that I was bound and determined to get in a full 30. I hit the trails at Clinton Lake about 8 am and immediately things felt great, I whipped out a couple of quick miles and then slowed down to take advantage of the quickly warming day. At about 6.5 miles in, I stopped to water behind a bush and almost peed on a geocache container. I spent a few minutes investigating it, and signed the logbook, I didn't take anything 'cuz I had nothing to leave in return. (Unless of course the geocachers would be interested in salt caps or a gu packet.)

At about the 10 mile mark, it had warmed up enough that I was getting downright hot so I stopped to take off my long sleeve shirt. Stupidly I hadn't worn a short sleeve one underneath so I was going to be exposing my pasty winter white skin in my sports bra to the poor creatures of the woods. Luckily up to now, all the creatures I had seen where of the 4 legged variety, but as soon as I had doffed my shirt, down the trail came an older couple walking their dog.. doh! At the 11.5 mile mark there is a trials course set up for mountain bikes and I always enjoy spending time playing around on the railroad ties and beams. I turned around at the 12 mile marker and headed back to my car for some food.... I ran out of water with 3 miles left so ended up being much slower due to thirst and some severe mud. When I got back to the car I dumped my Nathan Pack and grabbed my hand held bottle since I only had 6 miles left to do, I also ate and changed my shoes.

The shoe change was a big mistake... I had been wearing my La Sportiva FireBlade's which I absolutely adore, but I'm always open to other options and picked up a pair of Adidas Kanadias for super cheap on clearance. I've been wearing them here and there and while I'm not feeling the same love for them like my FireBlades, they haven't been awful.. until I hit the mud. These shoes are total and complete shite when it comes to mud. I have NEVER had so much mud build up with no shedding on a shoe before. The last 6 miles of my run consisted of me running until I felt like I was running in spike heels then having to stop and scrape mud off the bottoms.. and repeat again and again for 6 miles. When I got back to the car I was ready to throw them across the parking lot. GRR! It was kinda a frustrating end to a GREAT run. By the time I left the park, the wind was starting to pick up a bit which was about to blow in a wicked cold front.

16 hours later I was back at Clinton Lake for our Saturday morning group run and it was a MUCH different scene.. groups of warmly dressed runners huddling behind trees to block the frigid wind.. the ooey, gooey, squishy mud was now frozen ruts that threatened to turn your ankle at every step. The turn out was great for such a cold morning though and we all started off in good spirits. On the tight switchback turns you could see everyone snaking though and we stuck together for a few miles but then broke up into smaller groups. Everyone made it to the 6.5 mile "Lands End" section where we stopped for a quick picture and then most everyone dropped down to the blue trail which would take them back to the parking lot with almost 10 miles for the day. The rest of us headed on to get in at least 20 for the day. In our group there was 4 of us doing Rocky Raccoon, so a lot of discussion was about that. I felt pretty good for the first 16 miles and then by the 17 mile mark, my legs turned to shit... I was tired, I could totally feel the 30 from the day before. We slogged on but the last mile turned into a power walk mile. I was wearing a pair of Inov8 Roclite 312's (with goretex to keep my feet nice and dry), and as much as I want to like these shoes they just don't work for me. I'm kinda sad to send them back since I want to like them so much, but they just don't feel comfortable on me. At some point in the future I'll try another model by them, but I think the FireBlades will be my Rocky choice.

Today I was going to go to the gym and do some fast, super incline treadmill walking, but my cough has come back in full force so I was merciful and spared the other gym goers. I'm not sure, but I have to imagine I would get kicked out of the gym for coughing up lung oysters and spitting 'em on the floor next to the treadmill. Instead I spent the day napping, drinking tea and getting myself ramped up by watching "Running on the Sun" and "Dancing the Bear".

Happy New Year!

2009-01-06T13:40:00.002-06:00

I can't believe it's January already! December always goes so darn fast when you work retail. I was looking back on December's training calender and there are way too many empty spots for someone about to run a 100 miler. Someone remind me next time to pick a race that doesn't involve training over the most stressful, sick time of the year! I have been sick on and off for over a month now and it's really pissing me off. Right now I'm in the middle of a 4 day no activity streak, and I'm going bonkers!!
Looking back over last year which was my first full year of running makes me rather happy.. I did my first marathon, 50K, and 50 miler. I also met some of the most amazing people and had some incredible times. I didn't quite hit 2000 miles for the year but it gives me a chance to smash that amount this year. 2008 as a whole was a pretty good one for me.. there are things that didn't go quite as I planned, but even bad things can take you in a good direction and that's what I'm hoping for 2009. Running will remain a constant, but there are some things that I want to change for this year and luckily it looks like my husband is on board with the same changes so we'll see.
Mid-year will see some big changes and I really want to do the Mt Hood 50 miler in July but that could be right in the middle of some upheaval, so I'm crossing my fingers for the best on that one. I know that I want to do Javelina Jundred on Halloween.. I'm already planning my costume! The Free State 100k is already on my calender.. can't resist my racing at my favorite place to train. The rest of my schedule is kinda open.. I know I want to take some trips home to Colorado and put some miles in there, whether it is racing or just running. Since I only hear good things about the Tatur-put on races, a trip to Oklahoma is very do-able too... so many choices, so little time and money!

Happy December!

2008-12-15T12:52:00.002-06:00

December has been kinda rough.. I can't seem to shake this darn cold! I'm not very smart though, as soon as I start feeling just a little bit better I go out and do a 65 mile week instead of resting and kicking it for good. Which catapults me right back to feeling bad and I repeat the cycle again. It's amazing how many people have the same malaise.. it seems to be a bad year for getting sick. Of course drinking many beers and staying out till the wee hours of the morning this weekend didn't help either!
This week is slated to be in the single digits and below and I'm starting to panic just a bit with Rocky being only 8 weeks away, and not being able to put in the mileage I had planned on. I'm going to join a gym tonight so I can at least get on a dreadmill and do SOME work without destroying my lungs in frigid temps.

I still have 2 kittens and a mama cat (now fixed) to give away... anyone? anyone?

aw jeez..

2008-12-11T16:45:00.003-06:00

OK, so I had a big ol' race report pretty much done for Dude, Where's the Trail 50K that I ran a few weeks ago, and somehow I lost it.. how? I have no idea since Blogger autosaves, but it's nowhere to be found. I've spent the last week thinking I'd re-write it, but honestly I can't be bothered. A quick recap: This was truly my first DNF.. (I don't really count the one at Rock Creek when I got lost and ended up doing many more miles then the race was), I have a million excuses for dropping out at about 14/15 miles but it came down to "just not feeling it". It was our first cold snowy day of the year and I was running in a group with Debbie, Raul & Mike. As it got colder and wetter and we kinda lost the trail a few times, we made the mistake of discussing how good a margarita would taste.. that was the beginning of the end. Both Debbie and Mike were injured and my right knee had been feeling cranky since Nathaniel's run, so the 4 of us simply bagged it, caught a ride back to the start, and went off in search of the perfect margarita. I could have pushed though, and finished, probably with a lot of walking, but I just didn't want to... I guess I wasn't yet recovered from the 50+miles the weekend before.
So the 4 of us spent a very, very lovely afternoon drinking, eating and talking our heads off, it truly was a fabulous afternoon and we were all very glad to be inside! Sometimes cementing friendships is more important than anything else.

Random Uselessness

2008-11-29T10:37:00.002-06:00

So I had brussels sprouts on Thanksgiving.. and I liked 'em!! This, my friends, is huge. Brussels sprouts used to be my most hated of hated veggies (and I HATED veggies!), my parents used to make me sit at the table until I finished all the greenery on my plate and if I didn't finish them then I got the same darn veggies for breakfast, lunch, dinner.. until I finally ate them. Brussels sprouts however were the vegetable that I would end up either starving for 3 days or grounded over, because I flat out refused to eat them.
All that changed on Thursday, my wonderful friend Venus made a very tasty (vegan) veggie dish with brussels sprouts, and for the first time in my life I willingly put one in my mouth.. and now I find myself thinking I will stop at the grocery store tonight and pick a peck of sprouts to have for dinner. (They are very high in Vitamin A, C, folic acid & fibre).
Yay! This has been your nonsense blog post of the day!

( I also always thought that it was brussel sprouts but according to both Wikipedia and my spell check it is brussellS sprouts... who knew?)

Happy Thanksgiving!

2008-11-27T10:31:00.003-06:00

Happy Thanksgiving to all my wonderful friends, both real and "imaginary"! I hope every one's day is filled with their favorite foods and favorite people. Even though the economy and outlook seem to be so dire right now, I have no doubt that we all can get through this. There is always hope in this world and I remain hopeful that we will ALL come out of this better than we went in. And I'm not necessarily talking monetary-wise.. this is a good time for all of us to start practicing more compassion, love and selflessness towards our neighbors. If we can all reach out a helping hand to just one person on a regular basis, even in just a small way, we can start to change the world.
I have been reading the book "Universal Compassion" by Geshe Kelsang Gyatso and it's about developing unconditional love and compassion for all human beings. The phrase that resonated with me is the idea that "just as I want happiness for myself, so does everyone else. Therefore I must work as hard for their happiness as I do for my own". Not a bad thing to keep in mind and in practice.
I thank all my friends for their compassion, love and encouragement that they show me. You brighten my days with every post, email and in person hug. Enjoy your day!

Nathaniel's 6/12/24 hour run Nov 21 08

2008-11-23T15:10:00.003-06:00

"The woods are lovely dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep".
I'm not sure a 12 hour night race through the woods is what Robert Frost had in mind when he penned those words but they seemed pretty appropriate to me throughout the night. Nathaniel's Run started at 6 pm on Friday night.. I chose to run the 12 hour option although with temps in the 20's, maybe the 6 hour was the smarter choice! When I got to the Prairie Center where the race was being held, I found a good close parking spot.. where I could access my car trunk just meters from the course. Since I was self crewing, this was very important!
I checked in, got my handmade number, t-shirt and a certificate/thank you from Nathaniel himself. Nathaniel is the race director's nephew, he is 6 (I think) and he has cerebral palsy. The first year Nathaniel's Run was held, it was fund raiser for Nathaniel's family, and in subsequent years it has been to benefit other help programs. This year it was for Heartspring, a center for kids with special needs. The laminated certificate is complete with a handprint from Nathaniel and it is.. hands down, the coolest race item I have gotten! I got my stuff laid out and tried to keep warm with a big puffy jacket and lots of hugs from friends. There was a quick pre-race meeting which Nathaniel himself was at (all bundled up and adorable) and then we were off.. Kyle a fellow Trail Nerd led us all on the first lap as he threw down glow sticks to double mark some of the turns. The course was well marked with flagging and signs but the glow sticks came in handy as the evening progressed and weariness set in.
Our group consisted of Debbie, Deb, Laurie and I for the first 20 miles with others joining in and leaving us periodically. We stuck together and in typical Nerd fashion told jokes, stories, teased each other and farted a lot. The course was a pretty easy 3.35 mile loop and was mowed grassy areas, gravel roads, and wooded sections with multiple stream crossings. Luckily all but 1 of the crossings could be jumped, but one of them was way too wide to jump, so about the time my feet were dry, it was time to get 'em wet again! Surprisingly, my feet are in fine shape with no blisters!! I did something right.. I'm just not sure what it was!
About 3.5 hours into the evening, my husband showed up and walked a lap with me, it was really cool to be able to share my race with him. He said it was fun, but not fun enough to do it for 12 hours (darn, I keep trying to convert him!).
After he left I was on my own for the rest of the night, Deb, Debbie and Laurie were just doing the 6 hour race. It was a darn cold evening, and the wind & cold were the worst on the front side of the course, standing at my car, and for the first mile or so, it was colder than snot.. after that the course drops down and is less exposed and I was able to warm up with no problem. I really liked the short loops for the ease of aid.. some loops I carried water & food and some I did not.. and having ALL my stuff every 3 miles was almost too much, I spent way too much time trying to decide what to eat and what to take with me.. too many choices! At midnight Bobbi (a fellow Nerd) showed up to do the lap counting and she brought the BEST hot veggie soup.. it was completely spot hitting.. warmed me up and gave me a huge jolt of energy. It was the perfect timing as I was getting pretty darn chilled and tired of fruit.
I was really enjoying running along in the woods in the dark with my iPod on, at times the world narrowed to only the circle of light from my headlamp and the music pounding in my ears and at other times my thoughts drowned out the music. After the 6 hour runners finished the woods became eerily still, I would go loop after loop without seeing anyone, and then boom.. either another light would show up over my shoulder or I would spot a glow ahead of me. Everyone seemed to be in the same solitary mood, a few words were exchanged here and there but everyone seemed content to be running alone. The most human interaction I had for about 7 hours were the lap counters, they were cheerful and encouraging even though I'm sure they were freezing!! At one point I came upon Gary Henry (of Ultrastory.com fame) as he was eyeing the stream crossing with reluctance, he asked me to carry him across... let's just say Gary is not a fan of getting his feet wet!
As with all long runs, I had a few ups and downs.. but overall I felt remarkably good. I was peeing on almost every lap and my energy was pretty consistent. At one point I broke down and had a vegan peanut butter & chocolate chip cookie.. full of fat & sugar.. all stuff I normally avoid, but it was the best thing EVER and I ran a couple of great loops on it, I also imbibed some coffee.. caffeine is something else I avoid, but man, it was GREAT. I guess it's true what they say.. you'll try anything to get you through the long races (well, almost anything.. still no animals!)

It was a completely enjoyable race, I took it slow since I didn't really have a specific mileage goal in mind other than somewhere between 40-60 miles. I didn't want to wipe myself out and have to take off a bunch of time afterwards so I just took it easy and slowed down when I felt like it. I was very pleased with my nutrition, I was mixing coconut water and plain water in my bottles to give me some extra calories and I was very satisfied with how that worked. My headlamp is great except for wearing it for 12 hours gave me a huge welt on my forehead! I was even wearing a hat under it.. I'm going to try some moleskin on the backside and see if that helps. The light has 2 settings on it and I really liked switching between the 2.. it gave my eyes a rest when they got tired. On the backside of the course there was a long, grassy hill with real easy footing and I would turn off my headlamp while I was going up it.. the stars were amazing and there was just a small sliver of a moon. I could tell when I was reaching the top of the hill because the footing got a bit rocky and I would turn the light back on so as not to miss my turn at the top.
I ended the 12 hours with 53.7 miles... good enough.. and it made me very happy that I finished in good spirits and feeling pretty good. I was however very glad I was not doing the 24 hours! I went home and crawled in bed with the husband and slept for a few hours then got up and was surprised at how relatively not sore I was. The right knee needed some icing and arnica.. I'm not sure what that was about.. I didn't fall or anything, so it's something to keep an eye on. Spent Saturday napping and lazing around the house and finally fell asleep for good at about 9 pm, and slept like the dead.
Today I went for a 4.5 mile hike with the husband and dog and did a few small bits of easy running.. my legs were tight and sore! I'm hoping to be able to still get in a long run this weekend, but we'll see.

2008-11-18T21:02:00.002-06:00

I've been so lax on blogging lately.. life has been so very routine that it seems like there's nothing to say!
I've had to change up my normal running schedule a bit, a few Saturday's ago some of the Trail Nerds spotted a (approx.) 120 lb cougar at Wyco park... a park that I run at alone.. a lot. It was decided that I was no longer allowed to run out there on my own since I might make a tasty 4'11 100 lb cougar snack. Since I'm not to eager to get maimed or killed, I reluctantly agreed to only run out there in large groups. So I've been having to drive to Lawrence and run the Clinton trails more often, which isn't totally awful since those are my favorite trails around but it adds an extra 1.5 hours drive time to my workout. Blech!

I spent the last 2 Saturdays volunteering at races instead of running.. 2 weeks ago was the Veterans Day 4 mile run at Wyco Park and I spent the day writing down numbers and times.. my friend Laurie was there to confuse me and yell out incorrect numbers...not really, you see she was smart enough to wear her glasses.. I on the other hand, did not, so I couldn't see the runners numbers. I'm real smart sometimes! It was our first frigid cold day, so I got out the Michelin Man coat and then promptly ruined it by standing too close to the fire and melted the front of it. Again, I'm real smart! It was a usual Trail Nerds race with lots of happy runners and good cheer. Afterwards a bunch of us got in some decent mileage at the park... we kept a close eye out, but no cougars were to be seen.

This past Saturday I volunteered at a road race and let's just say the atmosphere was a bit different.. I think I'll stick to trail races. I was assigned a spot where the runners crossed a road, so I was there to make sure no cars ran them over. It was a pretty quiet street, so my main duty turned into ringing my cowbell and jumping around like an idiot, screaming encouragement and stupid things at the runners. I was surprised at how few people even acknowledged my presence, and since there were NO spectators it wasn't real hard to miss me! C'mon toss me a smile, a wave, a smart-ass comment.. even a hearty "fuck you" will do.. I'm freezing my ass off and would much rather be running far, far away from where I am!
It snowed for a bit.. nothing stuck though.. it was stupidly cold and I was much envious of the runners and wishing for a steamy hot cup of tea. Sunday was gorgeous and sunny and I did a few loops at SMP while my husband and dog hiked.. it was really nice to sleep in for a change and be able to spend the morning with my family. I ran into a bunch of other Nerds on the trails and it was nice to stop and have a bit of a chat in the nice weather.
This Friday is Nathaniel's Run.. a 6/12/24 hour run.. your choice. It starts at 6 pm so I chose to do the 12 hour run to practice the all night run for Rocky. I will be experimenting with shoes, clothes, lighting systems, & food and hoping to get in somewhere between 40-60 miles. I'm going to take it real slow and just see how the body reacts to the all night (cold!) run. The course is a 3 mile loop on very easy trails.. very minimal hills. Should be fun!

Late Halloween & election fun

2008-11-10T13:05:00.004-06:00

My Halloween and election week in pictures. Halloween night I spent drinking heavily (unfortunately) at the Record Bar watching some of KC's best musicians play Pink Floyds "the Wall" in it's entirety. I don't normally drink much, or hard alcohol anymore but somehow I got it in my head that drinking Gin & Tonic's would be a good thing. That led me to compete in a costume contest (I took 2nd place but ONLY because I was drunk enough to show the audience my frilly underwear), unfortunately the prize I won was a $50 bar tab which had to be used that night, which meant I spent Saturday in bed interrupted only by trips to the bathroom to puke.
I rallied in time to put the costume back on and go to 2 different parties that night, but I was designated driver and Death (aka my husband) did the drinking for us. The first party we went to served Death some absinthe they had smuggled in from the Czech Republic, I had a few sips but my scientific opinion was.....EWWWW!
Sunday I felt good enough to sweat out some toxins on the trails.. I swear I could smell alcohol coming out my pores!
Tuesday evening was spent at Davey's Uptown, hoping for the best with friends, food and lots of happy tears.

VOTE VOTE VOTE!

2008-11-04T06:09:00.004-06:00

Don't forget to vote today!! I don't care how you vote, just vote! Be an informed voter.. and that means on ALL the issues in your area. We all have our big "hot button" issues that we love to get behind and we all get energized for the presidential race, but honestly we should be most concerned with our school boards, city council people, sheriffs, judges, mayors, & governors.. THOSE are the people who's decisions will most directly affect our lives!! Every time the polling place is open we should be there, not just every 4 years. Think about it!!

And if while you are voting today, you witness voter suppression, intimidation or fraud.. do something! Call your secretary of state, call your local democrat/republican office, call a reporter! When someone is deliberately kept from voting, we all lose. If there is a problem with your registration, ask to cast a provisional ballot and then later you can straighten out things. Get your voice heard!

I am so genuinely nervous, excited and scared.. my ass will be parked in front of a TV tonight, beer in hand watching and waiting and with any luck celebrating!!
Now I'm off to vote!

WEEEEEEEEE!!

2008-11-03T16:50:00.001-06:00

Congratulations!

You successfully entered the Rocky Raccoon Endurance Trail Run located at
Huntsville State Park located in Huntsville, Texas on February 7, 2009.

Here are the details of your transaction:

Entrant Name: Coleen Voeks

Event: 100 mile race
Confirmation Number: 66

Entry Fee: $135.00
Online Entry Fee: $8.30
Total Charged: $143.30

Paid by: Mastercard

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

2008-10-31T11:38:00.003-05:00

Happy Halloween everyone! Here's hoping that everyone gets the good candy today (you know, the kind that doesn't give you cavities or makes you gain weight!). I don't eat candy but I will happily accept beer in my trick or treat bag. I want to see pictures of those costumes! I will be kicking off 2 nights of costumed debauchery starting at about 8 pm tonight, with any luck I'll still manage to get in a not-very-hung-over run or 2 this weekend. Have fun!!

Happy (painfree) dance!

2008-10-25T17:48:00.007-05:00

It's been a damn long 2 weeks, turns out I'm really grumpy, bitchy, and mean when I can't run.. and I eat a lot too. Today was the 4th race in the Rock Creek series out at Lake Perry, originally I had planned to do the 50K, but due to the injury, I did the half marathon instead. I'm actually kind of proud of myself for being smart and not going back gangbusters. I hadn't run a single step in 2 weeks but Friday I was finally totally painfree and felt like I had all my muscle strength back so I figured I'd at least give the race a go. I was so not ready for the race, I spent the morning racing around the house frantically trying to find my garmin, my shoes, dig out a long sleeve shirt to run in, and wondering where the heck I put my bladder (for my Nathan pack, not MY bladder). Obviously I hadn't put my running bag back together after Heartland. After waking my husband up accidentally by dropping a box on the floor, I was ready to go (sorry honey!)
I swung though Lawrence and picked up Christy "Mountain Mud Babe", she had signed up to do the 50K, but had been having knee problems again (cortisone shot stopped working), so she was going to drop down to the half and we were labeling ourselves "the injured contingent" and figured we'd run/walk/hobble together. I kept telling myself that if the leg hurt AT ALL, I was going to drop out and take more time off, and I made Christy promise to hit me upside the head if I tried to run through pain. We got to Lake Perry, got checked in and spent plenty of time socializing with folks (one of the best parts of a race!). Before long we were off and as I took my first few tentative steps, my joy grew as there was not a twinge from the quad. We took it very easy and did a lot of walking and just enjoyed the sunny morning playing in the woods with others. It was a gorgeous cool fall morning, with the leaves turning beautiful colors and dropping off the trees. As usual there was plenty of back and forth chatting and introductions with other runners and an opportunity to put faces to names.
My leg continued to feel perfect, but I could definitely feel the 2 weeks of inactivity in other muscles, so we slowed down and chatted, had fun & took pictures. At one point we picked up Laurie "Nerdo Mud Babe" on the trail, she had been running the 50K but her hip had blown up on her and she was noticeably limping, so we added her to our injured contingent and carried on. We finished in some ridiculously slow time, but didn't really care since we had just had a really good time out there! I pulled on a sweatshirt, grabbed a Lara Bar and settled in to watch the 50K finishers.
Trail Nerd Caleb was first and then we had a bit of a wait till the next finisher so we spent it gossiping and drinking really wretched beer. It was nice to get a chance to talk with some of the Topeka trailrunners.. something that we really don't get much of a chance to do! The Trail Nerds kicked some butt and did some serious damage to the top 10.. and our Mud babes rocked the top spots too!! Sophia took 1st female and Debbie (crew member extraordinaire) took 3rd. Debbie was so worried about finishing, but she's been training like a fiend and finished looking fast and fresh. Afterwards she admitted that she could have run another 20 miles!! She rocks! I had to take off before all the runners were done, since I was already late for work, but I left with a light heart and an even lighter step 'cuz I am a runner again!!

the Aftermath

2008-10-15T20:12:00.002-05:00

So my left leg isn't doing real stellar. I had that knot in my quad from mile 8 onwards of the race and I guess I should have been a bit more proactive in working it out instead of running on it. According to my friend Christy's physical therapist (whom she so nicely "lent" me) I tore up the muscle fibers and caused some bleeding in the muscle, and I'm under strict instructions not to run for at least 7 days. ARGH! The pictures are from Sunday, the one picture is from when I first woke up and the 2nd is from later in the day. The PT said that's blood under the skin. GROSS! He said that if I do run before it's healed I could cause some permanent damage with scarring and stuff which would make it always hurt when I run. So I will be a good girl and not do anything but sit around a play with the cute kitties.... look at that face!! How could you not want one??

Heartland 50 miler October 11 2008

2008-10-12T09:15:00.009-05:00

My first 50 and I'm not sure where to start....actually, yes I do, I have to start with thanking my friends and family. (WARNING! acceptance speech ahead.. cue the tears) I want to thank all my friends, both my "normal" friends who don't understand why I do what I do and think I'm totally insane for doing it, but love, support and encourage me anyway, and my running Trail Nerd friends who do understand and offer reams of advice, help, love, support and encouragement. My parents for supporting me fully, Mom for not shaking me and screaming "haven't you learned anything over the years?" when she heard I wanted to run ultras and Dad for his advice and for showing me when I was young that running extra long distances is perfectly normal. My FABULOUS crew Christy & Debbie who offered to waste a perfectly good fall weekend by being my "bitches", it was completely humbling to be the recipient of that much love and dedication. Finally to my WONDERFUL husband who doesn't understand why I want to do this to myself but gives me his total love, support and encouragement and doesn't bat an eye when he sees a charge for yet another pair of running shoes. Without all these people, my life would be pale, colourless, and sad. ( music swells and cut to commercial)

OK, now that the thanks are out of the way, I finished the Heartland 50 in 10:30:40, which was good enough for 11 place overall and 2nd female. Simply put, I ran out of my head. My main goal for this race was just to finish, my secondary goal was to finish around 12 hours my thirdary goal was to finish in 10 hours. The thirdary goal was my "yeah, right, dream on kid, we all have to have that pie in the sky to shoot for" goal.... I guess I should challenge myself more often.

Christy, Debbie and I left Lawrence about 3:30 on Friday in Debbie's husband's big ass truck (yes that is the technical term for it). Larry was sweet enough to let us borrow it, we were originally going to be borrowing Christy's boyfriends truck, but then one of the other Trail Nerds, Nick, called needing a ride so we had to get a bigger truck. We swung through Topeka and picked up Nick and headed for Cassoday. Unfortunately due to every one's work schedules we missed the pre-race meeting at 4:30 but made it in time to pick up our packets and eat dinner. Well, everyone else ate dinner, I had some iceberg lettuce... no vegan options.. everything either had meat in it or was smothered in cream sauce. Luckily I am used to this and brought my own dinner!
We chatted with a few people and then left to find our way to El Dorado and the hotel. The friendly check in girl asked us if we were there for the race. She said that they had 30 rooms reserved for that night and pretty much all of them were race people, so she knew we would be gone by 5am. We spent the evening drinking water and watching stupid TV. I don't have cable so when I get around a TV that has channels it can be kinda exciting. We caught the Colbert report and some bad VH-1 shows. I was waiting with baited breath for a phone call from my husband, he was due to be arriving home from his 3 weeks in Australia, but his plane was late leaving Sydney and I was afraid he would miss his connection in L.A. but all was good. Once I talked to him and made sure he was safe and sound, I was ready for bed. We turned off the lights but spent another hour at least making stupid jokes, laughing and telling sex stories.. then Nick gave Debbie a dutch oven which caused enough hilarity that I was afraid we were never going to fall asleep. I guess I did because when that alarm went off at 4, it was rough getting up.

The first thing Christy did upon getting up was to shove water in my face.. it would be the theme of the day... if I saw Christy , she would be making me drink. We horsed around but still managed to get out the door by 4:45. Christy and Debbie were awesome, they wouldn't let us even carry our own bags to the car! I felt like a pampered princess. We had a small mishap on the way to the race wherein we almost flipped the truck and smashed into a pole, but Debbie controlled things like a champ and we still made it to the race about an hour before the start. Nick and I checked in and started the bathroom dance.. do I need to go now? Should I wait a bit longer? Maybe I should try now.... We parked next to Caleb, one of the Nerds who was pacing Winn Davis (who would go on to win the 100). Another Nerd, Kyle Amos was also there with his awesome wife Stacey, Kyle would finish 3rd in the 100. I was pretty nervous, but making sure I had everything and giving last minute instructions to my crew kept me from going too nutsy. I tried one last bathroom stop with very little luck and then it was time to line up. This was Nick's first 50 miler too, and even though he's much faster then me, he figured he'd run with me at the beginning to keep himself from going out too fast. We lined up together and waved to Christy and Debbie and then we were off. As we all trotted very leisurely down the highway with headlamps bobbing, I got a chance to say a quick hi to Ken the Trail Zombie who is a total stud, he did Flatrock 50k 2 weeks ago, then Arkansas Traveller 100m last week and this week the Heartland 100.. yowza! What a guy!
Nick and I settled into a leisurely 11:30 m/m pace, or at least we tried to settle in, I kept checking the Garmin and due to our nervousness the pace kept creeping up and I'd have to slow us back down. By about mile 5 we were pretty dialed in pace wise and it was light enough to take off the headlamps. The scenery was amazing... the sun was just coming up and the sky was a gorgeous pinky orange , we were on a huge series of rolling hills and it was cool to see the runners in front of us silhouetted against the sky as they topped the hills. I was very unsure about this race because of the wide open-ness of it. I knew it was going to be amazingly gorgeous, but dirt roads and open spaces are not my favorite things. My biggest concern was how I was going to mentally handle being able to see for so many, many miles and know that I was moving so slow. Luckily, talking with Nick and the other runners made the first 1/2 go by pretty quickly. We chatted with guys from Arkansas, Seattle, & Virginia and everyone that we talked to loved this race and was doing it for at least the 2nd time. One of the guys we talked to was doing this as his 100th ultra.. and he had done all my fantasy ones... I could have run with him for days listening to his stories. By about mile 8, I knew this was not my ideal day.. I had a knot in my left quad that was already hurting and various twinges and aches told me that this day was not going to go exactly the way I had pictured things, but I figured I'd just keep plodding on as long as I could. By the time we hit the Lapland aid station which was the first one that was crew accessible, we both were pretty surprised that we had gone that far alredy. Christy & Debbie swung into action, refilling our water, handing us food and water to eat while we were standing there and making sure we had enough food to take with us. Due to their expert work, we were in and out in a few short minutes and it was energizing to see them. The next time we would see them would be at the 25 mile turnaround.

By this point the wind was picking up and the temps were starting to rise, it was predicted to be in the mid 80's for the day and without a lick of shade, it was a little worrisome. The miles continued to click off quickly due to the conversations... and as we got passed by David Wakefield on his way back to the finish, running easily in 1st place I started a running tally in my head of the people in front of us. I'm sure I won't ever win a race, but I like to be as competitive as I can be and having a ballpark idea of what place I'm in helps. We were passed by the first woman before we hit the turnaround and the 2nd place woman was leaving as we came in to the turnaround. Once again our spectacular crew provided food, water, encouragement and bio-freeze for my quad which was still all knotted up. I kept thinking while I was sitting there "what if I still had 75 miles to go?? ". I got a chance to say a quick hello to Jennifer who was there crewing for her husband Scott (doing the 100), who's blog I also read on a regular basis. Jennifer is 7 months pregnant and looks fabulous, there was some kids running around with t-shirts on that said "future ultra runner" and I told her that she'd better stock up on those in all sizes.
I really like out and back courses because I love to cheer on runners in front and in back of me.. I know how much it helps me to get encouragement so I try to make sure I dish out plenty myself. From my rough count Nick and I were sitting somewhere in the top 15 and I was possibly the 3rd female.
The first section after the turnaround had a killer headwind and running along with a guy who is over a foot taller than me worked to my advantage. I simply tucked in behind him and followed in his footsteps only popping my head out to cheer on runners as we passed them. Usually just over the marathon mark I hit a bit of a low spot, but not this time, which told me I was doing a good job of managing my nutrition and hydration. When we hit the 50k mark, I told Nick that the race started now. It was pretty much unknown territory from here on out for both of us. It was about here that Nick took off, my knot in my quad started cramping and between the swearing loudly and walking breaks that I needed to take, he just kept on going. It was nice to have had company for as long as I did but we both needed to run our own race.

My leg pissed me off so much that I just stuck on the iPod and ran through the pain.. I took an extra salt cap, and it seemed to settle things down a bit. The first song that came on my iPod when I turned it on was by XTC called "Stupidly Happy" which made me laugh, since that's pretty much how I felt.. I was in pain and tired but I wouldn't have traded being where I was for anything. I must say that I think I should be banned from listening to music when I race, it was like I had just shot up with speed. I tucked my head down and ran, and I came into the Lapland aid station (mile 33.2) just a minute or so behind Nick. Debbie and Christy got us all taken care of and I asked Christy to check and see if I was really the 3rd woman, but she had already been counting and could assure me that I was. As we were talking, the 4th place woman came into the A.S so I grabbed my stuff and took off like the hounds of hell were chasing me. I put the iPod back on and somehow found the energy to start ticking off 9 minute miles and then pretty soon I looked down and I was doing 8.5 minute miles... I was running out of my head, but I was feeling pretty good so I kept on going. I passed a few guys and Nick and I leap frogged for a bit and then pretty soon I came up on the 2nd place woman.. we were wearing matching Dirty Girl gaiters so I had to compliment her on them as I passed her.

I kept running in a state of disbelief and also fear, I still had 15 miles to go and I was running stupidly fast (for me anyway). The heat was pretty bad by this point and I was sorry that I wasn't wearing a hat. I like the wind on my shaved head but the sun was starting to piss me off. I kept running and playing air drums and air guitar as certain songs came on.. I even danced a bit. It was about mile 39 when the blisters started. One on each of my big toes which were annoying, but not awful, but the one on my left heel was driving me crazy. I wear short socks and the back of my shoe had been rubbing just long enough to cause a nasty spot on both heels but particularly on my left heel. It didn't hurt when I walked just when I ran so I tried to keep the running to a minimum until the next manned aid station where I could get a band aid. I can walk really fast so I wasn't totally worried about being passed by the girl behind me, but I was too scared to turn around and see where she was.

I pulled into Battle Creek aid station at 41.8 miles and got a quick band aid and tape job and more water and oranges thanks to the fabulous volunteers there. I got out of there pronto and settled into a walk for 1 song, run for 2 songs rhythm. It was in the last 7 miles that I had my "jesus moment" as Nick calls it. When I started running, all I heard about was how a marathon would change your life.. the whole "it was so hard, but once you did it you would know that you could do anything in life" song and dance... well I never had that, so I figured the 50k would do it....nope not that either. But now somewhere around mile 43 it was only my mind driving me forward, my entire body was telling me just to quit but I knew this was where I just had to keep pushing and not give up. Finally! I guess it sounds kinda sadistic to want to push yourself to the edge like that, but it was one of the things I wanted to experience. By feeling half dead, I felt more alive.

The last 5 miles of the race felt like the hardest, worst things I've done. It felt like forever because you could see the town and it never seemed to get any closer. There was a few points in here that I thought "I'm never doing this again". My left quad had gone beyond pain to something else and even my mind was feeling pretty fried. I just kept my head down and the music on and shortened my run walk cycle to 1 song running 1 song walking. I think one of the worst parts was there was no one else around.. I could see Nick up in the distance but the A.S at 41.8 miles was the last human contact until the winner of the 50 miler (David Wakefield) drove by and yelled some encouraging words from his car. Just 2 miles from the end one of my husbands songs came on the iPod and one of the lines in it is "the road to town is lifetimes long" and I kinda lost it, had a quick sob and just kept playing that song over and over to the end. As I made the last right hand turn onto the paved road I checked the Garmin and to finish in 10:30, I was going to have to run, and run pretty hard. Seeing everyone cheering me on up ahead gave me wings and I picked up the pace.. Debbie ran with me the last few yards and everyone else was hooting and hollering. It felt so damn good to finish.
I got tons of hugs from Debbie, Christy, Ben, Vicki, & Raul and they led me to a chair next to Nick. Nick finished 10 minutes in front of me for 10th place overall. As I tried to lower myself into the chair the RD had to chase me down and give me my finishers award... it felt awesome to get it. Christy stuck water in my hand and Ben gave me a cup of his homebrew... I gave Nick the high five and just took it all in. Raul took off my shoes and socks and starting using "the Stick" on my legs and feet and oh boy did that feel so good and so bad all at the same time. It's a fine line between pleasure and pain. We relaxed for awhile and cheered people in, ate some food, & drank some awesome beer.

After awhile we headed over to the 95 mile unmanned aid station where Ben & Raul have traditionally set up the "Mirage" aid station at night for the 100 folks. They do it up right.. a big tent with twinkly white lights and all the food you could ever want to eat. Vicki made up some homemade soup and a big pot of boiled potatoes and I cut up lots of watermelon which was a HUGE hit with the tail end of the 50 folks. I think all RD's should make watermelon a staple at ALL aid stations (hint hint). With 7 of us we were able to get the tent set up and everything going in short order and then we just hung out drank more beer and told stories. We waited around to see Wynn Davis, the 1st place finisher come through with Caleb Chatfield (our own Trail Nerd) pacing him and then I initiated some movement towards the car. I would have been happy to stay all night and help out, but my husband was waiting at home for me and I hadn't seen him in 3 weeks. I was ready to go!!

I learned a LOT of lessons from this race... the biggest one I took away was that I need to do a HELL of a lot more work before I'm ready for a 100 miler. I'm taking this week off except for some light easy runs and then it's back into some serious training. I have work to do before February! Heartland is a great race, and I can see why so many people like it, but I think I need to be a lot more stronger mentally before I could do it again. I prefer my long runs in the woods where I can't see from horizon to horizon. But that said, I'm so glad I did it and that I picked this one as my first 50.. the race was so well put on, everyone was so nice and the volunteers beyond friendly and helpful.

Donations needed!

2008-10-10T10:35:00.003-05:00

This weekend I'm soliciting donations of extra energy and possibly even a spare pair of legs.. please send to:
Heartland 50miler
Cassoday, KS
Attn: runner #159

Thanks so much... your donations will be put to good use and the recipient will be SO very grateful!

Have a FABULOUS weekend!

Need some pussy?

2008-10-03T11:22:00.003-05:00

So we've had this cute little stray kitten that's been hanging around our house for a few months now.. he won't let me touch him but he also doesn't run away real far when I try. I've been occasionally feeding him even though my husband has strictly forbidden it. We've rescued other stray cats & dogs before but our current cat Rueben is a cranky old man and isn't crazy about other felines in his house so we've had to find homes for the others. Since I don't think I have any more friends that are willing to take any strays, I've had to curtail my instincts. I've been hoping to get to the point with this one that I could catch him and at least get him fixed and then release him again.
Since my husband has been in Australia, I've bumped up the feedings a bit (bad, bad wife) and yesterday morning I was at my kitchen sink looking out the window and I saw the kitten on my neighbor's porch, he was limping badly, and it looked like he couldn't put any weight on one of his front paws. I went outside to see if I could grab him and take him to our vet... he just sat on the porch crying really loudly and let me pick him right up. I checked the paw out and it wasn't bleeding or anything so since I was late for work, I put him in our basement with some food and water figuring I'd take him to the vet in the morning on my way to work. When I got home from work last night, I checked on him but couldn't find him in the basement, but I figured the poor thing was just getting a good, safe sleep with a full belly.
This morning I walk downstairs and the kitty is mewling up a storm and I panicked figuring his foot was really hurting him and then I realized that the kitty was next to me and the mewling was taking place elsewhere in the basement. Turns out the boy kitty was a knocked up little girl who totally played me for a fool. She had 4 little kittens all over my basement last night. No wonder she let me pick her right up, she knew she had a sucker on the line.. warm, dry, safe place to have her kittens and food and water to boot!
So after totally freaking out, I got a box fixed up with old towels and collected the babies from all over (she really wandered while having them) and had to cut 1 of the kittens free from the placenta. EW! Mama got in the box with them, but in the process stepped all over the poor things and laid right on top of them. I'm not entirely sure she knows what the heck to do! Heck I don't know what to do!
My husband called about an hour after I got them settled, it was about midnight in Sydney and he was staying with some friends he hadn't seen in zonks, so of course they started hitting the Jack Daniels (hard). It made it a heck of a lot easier to tell him we were parents, but I'm not sure he'll remember when he wakes up in the morning! So in 8 weeks does anybody want a kitten??? Please??? They'll be fixed and have their shots!

(I'll borrow a camera from someone and post pictures of them later)

Flatrock 50K Sept 27 2008

2008-09-30T10:22:00.006-05:00

At 3 AM when my alarm went off, I had more than a few seconds of reconsideration.. it would have been so easy to turn off the alarm and go back to sleep instead of getting up to drive 3 hours and then run for 9 hours and then turn around and drive for 3 hours again. Then I remembered all the hassle I went through with work to ensure I could do this race and the fact that Christy was counting on me to be a support for her.. and I got my butt out of bed. Due to the father in law surgery and work situation because of it (see previous post), I was not able to drive down to Independence, Kansas the night before as originally planed. I had gotten home from work and dropping the dog off at the babysitters about 10pm the night before and made sure my race bag was ready to go before falling into bed for about 4 1/2 hours of sleep. When I got up all I had to do was throw on my clothes and get some food down before heading out the door.
I was kinda shocked at how many people were on the road at 3:30 in the morning... at one point I was actually having to get cranky about left lane slow drivers and my inability to get around them. The drive went pretty quickly, I wound my way south on some smaller state highways through sleeping small towns. I encountered some patches of pretty thick fog which slowed me down a bit but luckily not enough to make me late. When I got to the Elk City Reservoir I got a bit confused since it was dark and there was no "Race Event" signs directing me where to go but luckily a quick phone call to Christy got me turned back around and to the correct spot. The sun was just coming up and the surroundings looked very pretty. Christy and Greg had very kindly picked up my packet the night before, so I got my number from them and got everything together. On my way to the bathroom I ran into Doug and Kim from KC, this was Kim's first 50K and Doug's first one in awhile. Beth Hilt, one of our Trail Nerds came down to do the 25K, and even though she didn't start for another hour she was there early to cheer us on.. what a peach!

The starting was on the main paved road which we would run on for a bit before darting off into the woods. At the start I saw Alison, another one of our Mud Babes, and Ken my favorite Trail Zombie. Ken was snapping pictures left and right and since this was his 6th Flat Rock, we followed him for a bit until he dropped us like a naughty habit. The course was amazingly gorgeous and difficult from the get go. My main goal for this race was to help Christy finish, the secondary goal was to take it easy, treat it as a training run and not destroy myself for the Heartland 50 miler in 2 weeks. Due to Christy's knee issues I knew that we were going to be moving slow and doing quite a bit of walking, which was exactly what I needed. We quickly found ourselves at the back of the pack but we were having a blast laughing our heads off at the some of the ridiculousness of the trail and taking bunches of pictures. The course is marked by blue blazes on trees, rocks, or anything that doesn't move. There was a few points where we got off course, because of the rockiness of the course you had to be so careful about looking down at your footing that a few times I simply missed seeing the markings.

The race has a 10 hour cutoff and Christy was worried that we were going to miss it, so we were very careful to spend as little time as possible at the aid stations. I lost a ton of time at the Psummer Psycho race messing around at the fabulous aid stations and was determined not to make the same mistake this time. As we were coming on the A.S we would have our packs off and our lids unscrewed, ready to fill up quickly and we'd grab handfuls of food and just keep going. The turnaround aid station we spent about 5 minutes at because Christy was getting blisters so she had to do some repair work but the rest of them we spent 2 minutes or less at. They were pretty standard aid stations, nothing special, except of course, for the volunteers, who were friendly, helpful and wonderful. They get 2 full thumbs up and a ticker tape parade. I can't rave about the food offerings since they didn't have watermelon. The turn around aid station was manned by Ken's wife Dana and she was so very fabulous, fussing around us like a mother hen making sure we had everything we could possibly need. She also had some way comfortable looking camp chairs and after eyeballing one I wisely chose not to plop my butt down.

For most of the 1st half of the race we had been playing leapfrog with a group of 3 girls and Christy kept having to rein in my competitive urge, whenever they were in front of us I would pick up the pace noticeably to reel them in, but running fast was NOT what I was supposed to be doing that day, so she kept making me back off. I had to keep my mantra of " it's just a training run" firmly in my head. We had been behind them before coming into the turnaround, but when we got there they were nowhere to be seen, and we were a bit concerned. We let Dana know to keep an eye out for them, but as we were getting ready to leave they showed up having gotten a bit lost. We passed Doug and Kim on their way to the turnaround and Kim was looking pretty tired. They are both uber experienced road marathoners but hadn't done much trail training and this wasn't the easiest of a course to attempt without much trail experience.

We leap frogged the girls again, and it was about this point that Christy's knee really started to give her grief, but she took some Advil and once that kicked in we picked up the pace quite a bit. We caught the girls , who were looking pretty rough, so we asked if they had been taking any salt. They indicated that they hadn't been nor did they have any, so since we were so close to the next aid station, we told them to be sure and get a whole bunch of S-caps from the a.s and start taking them regularly. We took off and when we hit the a.s we double checked if they had any S-caps there, but all they had was rock salt. So Christy and I determined that between us we could leave some s-caps and still have enough to finish the race ourselves. We left with strict instructions to make sure the girls got them and took them.
We were feeling great all through the middle section, we were hauling ass, eating and hydrating properly. When we walked we were speed walking, there was no pussy footing around for many miles. Around mile 22 we got the giddies and everything became hysterically funny. At one point Christy stopped running, looked around and went "What the fuck is this?" In our silly state that was the funniest thing ever and we wasted some time snorting, and laughing. I had to explain that this was called a trail race and we paid for this privilege. The giddies kept us going until the last 4 miles or so.

When we hit the last aid station, Greg, Christy's boyfriend was waiting for us, he had finished in 4th place in 6:11:53. We came through the trees and as he caught sight of us he yelled "holy crap" you guys aren't supposed to be here yet. Christy took some more Advil and we grabbed a handful of food and kept going.. we were both getting pretty tired and Christy's knee had about had it. The last 2 miles were just a slog fest, and when we finally popped out on the road, we still had a mile on pavement to run. The knee was toast, so we walked most of the paved section but as we got close the cheers and crazy noise that everyone was making made sure we ran in the last bit. Beth, who had finished her 25k hours earlier, had hung around and was cheering us on from the corner. We finished in 8:51:59. Afterwards we hung around for a bit and ate and relaxed, but I wanted to get home before dark so I asked the RD for my finishers award and took off. It was a fun race, rocky, rocky and rocky, but a lot of fun. Christy did so incredibly well and I'm so impressed with her, there's no way I would have been out there with the level of pain she's dealing with She ROCKS!
Before the race I had heard much hype about how this was supposed to be one of the hardest 50k's around so I was feeling pretty nervous, but it didn't turn out to be that bad... maybe it's just my Colorado upbringing, or maybe it was the fact that I was using this as a training run but I didn't think it lived up to it's difficulty hype, it is however a super fun run on a very pretty course.
Pictures thanks to Ken the Trail Zombie!

Taper Insanity!!

2008-09-26T07:36:00.004-05:00

I'm 15 days out from Heartland 50 miler and I've been forced into taper and it's driving me batshit insane! My father in law is having some major surgery which necessitated my husband flying to Australia for 3 weeks (have I mentioned that that's where he's from?) Anywho since we own a small business together, if one of us isn't working the other has to pick up the slack. Which usually is no big deal, but combine working 60 hours a week with not being able to train and being worried about my father in law and missing my husband and I'm pretty much certifiably nuts.
Last Saturday before I took him to the airport I was able to get in a fabulous 30 miler.. it felt great and when I finished I wanted to turn around a go out for another lap. That made me very happy!! If I can get through Flatrock 50k this weekend feeling good then I will feel like I'm ready and be happy even if it won't make the taper crazies go away.
I'm running tomorrow's race with my friends Christy and Kim.. this is their first ultra and I'm so happy to be doing it with them. For awhile it didn't look like I was going to be able to do the race due to work conflicts but then I sold my soul to the devil so it's all good. I can't wait! Christy is kinda crazy, she's doing this race and then on Wednesday she and her doctor will be setting a date to have her knee scoped. She's been in major pain all summer but wanted to get this race done before being out for awhile. She told her doc that she wanted to make sure she would be ready to pace me at Rocky Raccoon 100 in Feb. If runners are nuts then ultra runners are truly insane. Happy weekend everyone.. Happy Trails!

The Dirt Doll Drowned

2008-09-15T12:07:00.000-05:00

So I just got back from a run at Wyco park..and it has been ages since I've done a long trail run by myself. I love the fact that there is always someone ready to go for a run whatever the day or time, but I didn't realize till this morning just how much I'd missed running by myself. It has been raining here in KC for the past few days so the trails are thoroughly saturated, in fact the trails were actually running rivers in a lot of places. It was with some reluctance that I headed out into the pouring rain, but dammit that 50 miler is coming up quick! As I headed towards the trails, a fisherman yelled at me that I had forgotten my raincoat... bah! Trail runners don't need no steenkin' raincoats! Within moments I was soaked from head to toe and happy as a pig in mud (no lipstick on this pig thank yew very much!). For most of the summer my inner mud babe had been AWOL.. every once in awhile I would hear something far off in the distance that sounded like "mud bog" in a squeaky "tin man" type voice. But my inner dirt doll would say stuff like "ignore that bitch" and we'd go back to pounding the heat hardened, dry trails. Well this weekend, the mud babe jumped up and held that bitchy dirt doll under a nice big mud puddle until she stopped flailing. I might not see her again for awhile!
I spent the day squelching though mud puddles and splashing through knee deep puddles and water crossing. I watched deer drink from the streams running down the trails and witnessed a turtle paddling down the trails too! It was an amazing primal Friday and I enjoyed it so much I came back and did it again on Saturday. 2 days in a row of wet, muddy, fabulous solitary running was what I needed. lately running had been SERIOUS BUSINESS. After all I'm training for a 50 miler and thats SERIOUS. (insert ominous music here). I had kinda forgotten that running is supposed to be fun, so a weekend of getting out of my own head and enjoying myself was exactly what I needed. Sunday was supposed to be a 10 mile run with Christy but instead turned into a 6 mile hike at Wyco (again) with her and her dog.. we turned it into a day of working on speed hiking and enjoying some excellent conversation. This week will be back to SERIOUS training but hopefully not quite as serious as before.. maybe just Serious training.

More Nerd News!

2008-09-11T10:11:00.003-05:00

Yes... it's true.. the Trail Nerds really are going for world domination!! Check out the great article by Carolyn Szczepanski, who actually runs with us!

http://www.pitch.com/2008-09-11/news/trail-nuts/

Best shopping trip EVER!

2008-09-09T11:52:00.005-05:00

So a few weeks ago my friend Abby tells me she wants to start running! Yay! Happy Dance! Any time anyone tells me they want to start running it makes me happy, but this made me jump up and down in joy. If you've been reading my blog you'll know that Abby is my friend that recently was diagnosed with breast cancer (read her blog!), so her quitting smoking and taking up "runnish" (her term) makes me joyful. I printed out the Couch to 5K program for her to start with, which is a wonderful program for beginners. Abby mentioned that she didn't have running shoes so I asked on the Trail Nerds yahoo group if anyone had a spare pair of 8.5 shoes that I could beg, borrow, or steal for her.

Within 3 minutes of posting that request, my inbox was stuffed with emails from people wanting to buy her a pair of shoes. I was completely overwhelmed and couldn't stop crying, it was the most amazing outpouring of love and caring for someone they had never even met. When all the dust had settled, it was decided that since so many people wanted to help donations could be sent to the Trail Nerds P.O. Box. After all was said and done, the wonderful runners of K.C. sent $400 in cash, a $50 gift certificate to Gary Gribbles and a gift certificate for a pair of Vasque trail shoes ($90 value). Once again I cried my eyes out, and wondered how I got so lucky to get hooked up with such a fabulous group of people.

Yesterday was the day of shopping.. Abby only knew she was getting a new pair of shoes, she had no idea that she was going to get lots of stuff! When I told her in the car on the way to the store, she was overwhelmed and didn't know what to say...it was hardly surprising since I didn't know what to say myself and I know these people!

It was super busy at Gribbles when we got there so we hit the clothing section first. Unfortunately they didn't have the fall/winter stuff in yet and as Abby puts it "mama doesn't wear shorts!" so we were thwarted in our quest to spend every last penny. After jumping up and down and running circles in the dressing room, she ended up with a good sports bra and long sleeve shirt and a couple pairs of socks. (We'll go back in a couple of weeks to get some long pants and shirts and jacket.) Abby hadn't ever been in a running store before so we did some wandering around and looking at all the stuff, she declined a hydration pack for the moment. She said "it's a fanny pack!" I told her calling it a hydration pack makes it sound less dorky.

After that, we hit the shoes...I gave Abby strict orders not to let me buy any shoes for myself.. I have self control issues when it comes to shoes. At one point in my life it was an addiction to pointy high heels and now it's running shoes. Our sales guy checked out Abby's feet, made her walk around a bit in her socks and brought out a few pairs of very bright, white shoes for her to try. It took a few pairs until she found one that felt like clouds. We took a quick spin through the parking lot and she decided that the "communist" red Sauconys were the winners. Then we got to the trail shoes.. a beautiful pair of dusty orange Vasque Blurs were the take home winner. At one point Abby totally freaked out the poor sales guy.. she had mentioned that she recently quit a 2 pack a day smoking habit, and he asked her when she quit, but she thought he said why, so she replied "I got cancer" and we both busted up laughing. The expression on the poor guys face was priceless, which made us laugh harder, 'cuz you know, cancer is funny.
So we got to spend a chunk of money and we still have more to buy.. but most importantly Abby got running shoes and gear that feel like clouds and will help her go far and fast and get and remain healthy. Thank you is probably the most inadequate phrase in the English language, but I'm not sure how to put into words what's in my heart. I've heard it said so many times that runners are some of the best people in the world and you guys just proved it beyond the shadow of a doubt.

(sorry about the no pictures thing.. my camera has gone AWOL on me)

One year!!

2008-09-04T19:31:00.003-05:00

This weekend was my one year anniversary of running! It was one year ago that Erik & I were driving across Illinois en route to Wisconsin when, like a bolt of lightning, it hit me. I want to run... I want to run a marathon... I want to run a marathon with my dad! (I think there's a joke in there somewhere about Illinois being so boring that running a marathon sounds like a brilliant idea) The very next morning, I got up and hit the hotel treadmill.. and amazingly I enjoyed it enough to want to keep doing it. When I got back to Kansas City I kept getting up in the mornings and running and running and running... then Bad Ben talked me onto the trails, which got me running even further. I kinda figured that I would train, run the marathon and that would kinda be it... after all I always swore that I would never be a runner.
Growing up crewing for Dad at ultras kinda sucked... my friends would go on cool vacations and we were always going to some random place to get up early to watch Dad run into the woods, then we'd pile into the car, drive for a bit, park and wait for him to run out of the woods, hand him food and drink, change his shoes and socks and watch him run back into the woods, whereupon we would pack up, and repeat for 30 hours or worse for 6 days (that race is an entire blog post in itself). Yippee!! Needless to say running wasn't high on my to-do list.. I did a few 5ks and 10ks when I was young but that was the extent of it. So I never meant to fall in love with running.. but somehow I did, I have found an amazing amount of joy in the simple act of putting one foot in front of the other. It turned out that Dad gave me some of his distance running DNA. I knocked out the marathon at the end of April, and kept going, 35 miler, 50K, and now in October a 50 miler.
It has been such an enjoyable year, I have gotten to know some of the best people, run some amazing trails and re discovered a childish joy in running and playing in the mud. I'm so grateful to that bolt out of the blue from 1 year ago.. god, fate, nature, whatever it was.. I'm so very, very grateful.

Nerds in the News

2008-08-27T11:44:00.003-05:00

There was a nice write up in the Shawnee Dispatch today on the movement otherwise known as the Trail Nerds. Go here: http://www.shawneedispatch.com/news/2008/aug/26/runnin_dirty/

WOAH!

2008-08-27T08:51:00.005-05:00

I really can't say anything other than, runners are hands down (feet down?), the best people in the world! I am overwhelmed by some things that have transpired in the last 24 hours and I will share those things at a later date, but right now I just have to say wow! I love you all!!

*and just to make it clear.. the picture is just a random cute dog picture

Mana Mana

2008-08-19T10:30:00.005-05:00

So due to some alcohol induced silliness at a party on Friday night, I had the following song stuck in my head during my long runs this weekend..and I'm only too happy to share with you guys... good luck getting it out of your head!

Hair yesterday, gone today

2008-08-15T12:17:00.002-05:00

I spent an evening with my friend Stacy showing our support and love for our friend Abby.

Satire article....

2008-08-14T11:31:00.003-05:00

.... or is it the truth???

http://usedwigs.com/ultramarathoner-hates-his-family/

Susan Komen Race for the Cure 5K

2008-08-13T11:15:00.004-05:00

First off I have to thank all my wonderful friends who donated... thank you from the bottom of my heart, I know that money is tight for all of us and I really appreciate the sacrifice. I hope nothing but wonderful karma on you all! Many kisses and hugs and mud love!

Getting up for this run on Sunday morning was both really hard and really easy. Husband's band had played a show the night before at we didn't get home until 2:30 am. When that alarm went off at 5:30, it would have been so easy to roll over and go back to sleep, but having just seen Abby the night before with her new adorably sassy short hairdo, singing her heart out on stage even though she'd just had a round of chemo.. well how could we just go back to sleep? I roused the husband since we were doing this thing together and we got ourselves out the door. The race started at Union Station which is only a 5 minute drive for us on a normal day, but I figured traffic and parking was going to be a total pain, so we left early. As we headed down Broadway, there was a big ass line of cars in front of us, so we shot down a side street and just parked, it was no big deal for us to walk a mile to the start... best to save the closer parking for others. It was a gorgeously cool morning and the sun was shining.
We started wandering around the expo marveling at all the stuff that was being given away... if it was pink, it was being sold or handed out. I'm not a big "fight for the freebies" type person, so we just watched and laughed. (I did end up with some nice pink lip gloss and pink energizer bunny ears!). The only thing I got excited about was registering to win a free New Balance running outfit complete with shoes. (not that I wear NB stuff, but I'd certainly give a free pair a go!) I started calling my friends to see if anyone was there yet... my friend Sophia is an anchor at a TV station in Topeka and she was bringing a cameraman along to do a story. I was instructed to wear my pink mud babes shirt and find her before the race. We also needed to find Travis and his family/team so we could all at least start out together. Luckily both Sophia and Travis were easily found... thank goodness for cell phones! We did a quick interview with Sophia and then Travis, husband & I went off to find the rest of Travis's team. There was 24,000 people running/walking this thing, so we stood around for many, many, many minutes before we were able to start moving. And as we were crammed together and I was feeling much like a cow, I realized exactly why I don't run big races....this sucked! It got better when we started moving, and it was more fun to be spread out and able to see people. I was enjoying reading every one's shirt and signs that they had, I wish I could have talked to everyone and heard their stories. I chose to do the non-competitive run, so I could do it with my team and husband, so there was all sorts of people around us. We ended up breaking away from our group, there was so many people it was difficult for just Erik & I to stay together! We bobbed and weaved our way around people, enjoyed all the different bands that were playing and the cheerleaders they had on almost every corner. I swear every possible cheerleading squad within a 75 mile radius must have been out there!
The water stops kinda pissed me off... OK more than kinda... they were handing out big bottles of water and people were taking 1 or 2 sips and then throwing them on the ground. It was so freaking ridiculous, I don't even know where to start ranting! Thanks for destroying the environment people! (deep breath.. calm down and focus) OK, Erik and I had a really good time, and my non running "I hate running, you'll never get me to run" husband Erik actually did run a good chunk of the race! I keep telling him NOT to take up running, because I know that he would totally kick my ass and I'd be pissed, but I really enjoyed sharing the thing I love so very much with the person I love so very much. We finished ( I forgot to put on a watch so I have no idea how long it took us) and watched other finishers for awhile.
It was a pretty emotional morning, I kept getting choked up reading survivors shirts stating how long they'd been cancer free. I kept wishing we could just fast forward time to when Abby will be wearing that shirt that says 10 years cancer free. I have to thank Travis for inviting Erik & I to be a part of his team and honoring his mothers memory, it was a huge honor to have her name on the backs of our shirts.

Link to Sophia's report on the race (I admit to feeling myself up on TV!)

Link to Abby's blog... everyone really should read her blog, she just started it and it's a scream, but it's also made me cry a few times. Since she is a fabulous songwriter, writing really is her forte and her personality shines through. (If finding humour in cancer in not your thing you might want to skip it though)

Psycho Night Trail Run Aug 8

2008-08-11T20:45:00.004-05:00

Whew! I'm finally getting caught up with entries! I was so sad to not still be on vacation but this race helped make me happy again. Yet another zany race from the Trail Nerds.. this one was a fun 10K that started at 8 pm at Wyco Park... just in time for it to get nice and dark. I was so very excited to see my running friends and catch up on everything that had happened while I was away, and a race was the perfect opportunity to do so. I got to the park about 7:00, pulled in right next to Nick and Laurie and the fun began. I stood around and gossiped with everyone for awhile and then wandered over to get my number.... I requested number 69 and Shane was kind enough to dig through the stack and find it for me. Yes! I Love being totally juvenile sometimes!
While waiting in line I finally got to meet Kim & her husband Doug... I've been totally enjoying her blog for ages now and it was great to find out that she really does exist! That's a picture of the 2 of them... aren't they adorable? I've been harassing her to stop running on the pavement and just run trails with us, but they do so much good work with Team in Training it's really selfish of me to try and lure them away. I was rockin' my new Mud Babes technical shirt that Bad Ben had so awesomely dropped by my work earlier in the day and so were a ton of the other girls!

Ben gave us a 15 minute speech on all the stuff to look for and the usual warnings and then we were off into the twilight. I bought a new headlamp at REI when I was in Colorado, but hadn't tested it out yet, so it was with crossed fingers that I turned it on and stuck it on my head. It was a super fast start and I stupidly didn't think to warm up... too much socialization, and I didn't consider that it was a short race. It usually takes me a good 3 miles to warm up, so I was sucking some serious wind for awhile. The course was a small, usually muddy section from the Psycho Wyco course but sadly most of the mud on the course was dried into ankle breaking ruts so I was feeling a bit out of my element! By the time I hit the Triangle I was feeling more warmed up and felt pretty good whipping through the twisty section. There was a good 15 of us in a row and the glow of head lamps and flashlights through the super tight twisty sections was super cool to see. I wish I had had a video camera! By the time we got out of the triangle I was feeling great but for some reason the dark was fucking with my head and I was reluctant to pass anyone. I figured as soon as I stepped off the trail to pass I would fall on my ass, so I just stayed behind the conga line until the trail opened up on a hill and then I was able to get by a few people.
I finished 10th female... not my best effort but it was fun and showed me that I need to do a lot more running at night. I felt pretty timid and the LED light was messing with my vision, so maybe a combo of regular light and LED is the way to go. I will also wear a bandanna on my head underneath my headlamp, I was sweating so much it was slipping down. Afterwards everyone hung out and ate Popsicles and drank beer and socialized. I wish we could do 1 night race a month!

Thanks to the ever wonderful Dick Ross at seeKCrun.com for the pictures

Pikes Peak

2008-08-11T13:32:00.003-05:00

Continuing on my Colorado vacation theme of running some of my favorite places to hike when I was a wee one, I ran Pikes Peak on Tuesday Aug 5. Well, I ran to Barr Camp (1/2 way) anyway. I was lazy and slept in a bit so I didn't actually get on the mountain until about 7:30, which was too late of a start to consider doing the whole round trip. I was crossing my fingers and hoping I was altitude adjusted enough not to get sick and also hoping that I could be quick enough to get back down before the afternoon storms rolled in. I was carrying a long sleeve shirt in my Nathan pack but I'd just prefer to avoid the storms and the heart attack inducing lightning strikes that can happen on the Peak.
I started up slowly into the first switchbacks, and by the time I hit the first 1/2 mile there were a ton of runners coming back down. Running up the incline and then running back down Barr Trail is a popular morning run and since the Pikes Peak marathon was only a few weeks away, I was spending a lot of time giving way. I know that technically uphill runners have the right of way, but on the loose scree it's a lot easier for me to step aside and some of those runners were flat out flying. I took a mile detour over to the Incline trail to watch people coming up for awhile, I was kinda hoping for a Matt Carpenter sighting, but no such luck. I chatted with a woman from Michigan for a few minutes, she was asking about my Nathan pack and I was more than happy to extol it's virtues to her.
After a few minutes of watching gasping, sweating people struggle up the hill, I made my way back to Barr Trail and continued upwards, at this point I started passing people going up but no one was coming back down yet. I passed a woman with a light day pack on and a comb in her hand, and periodically she would stop walking and comb her hair! I slowed way down to watch for a few minutes... it was the oddest thing I had ever seen.
It was a gorgeous, peaceful morning, temps in the low 80's and most importantly low humidity... I was loving running for hours without ending up drenched in sweat. I was enjoying running by myself and had kinda gotten into a bit of a trance when I rounded a switchback and up ahead of me, I saw what I thought was a bear. I stopped dead, let out a squeak and as my heart raced madly, I realized it was just a big furry black dog. Scared the bejesus out of me. These are the times I wish I had a Garmin 305 with the heart rate monitor just so I could see what kind of spike I had gotten. I gratefully patted the dog as I passed him and expressed my relief to his owner. The rest of the way up was uneventful, except for losing my bright pink bandanna. When I realized I had dropped it, I just figured I'd find it on the way back down instead of backtracking.
When I reached Barr Camp, I used the bathroom, which were the NICEST things. They were composting toilets and were meticulously maintained, there wasn't a bug or piece of dirt, or even a bad smell in there. I was tempted to take a picture, but figured that might be a bit too weird. I ate a Lara bar and cleaned out my shoes while watching all the hikers mill around. I spent a few minutes talking to Teresa who along with her husband, Neal are the caretakers at Barr Camp.. they are both ultra runners and we talked races... she was hoping to do Heartland but it filled up too quick. I moved on when a bunch of hikers showed up with questions, but not before telling Teresa that I'd kill for her job! The idea of living half way up my favorite mountain year round taking care of hikers & runners.... woah, talk about a dream job! Cold & snow and all!
I headed back down at a quick clip... the last time I ran down this mountain I couldn't walk for a week, so I was really hoping this time would be different! I wasn't a 1/2 mile down when I heard the first thunder come rumbling through the trees.... I looked up and sure enough, dark, cranky looking clouds... I picked up my pace even more. It felt like flying at times, and luckily it only felt like flying... I remained solidly on my 2 feet instead of spread eagle on my face. As I pounded down the trail I was keeping an eye out for my bandanna that I had dropped, and at one point folded up nicely under a tree was a bandanna... but it was purple, not my pink one. I kept going and not a mile further there was another bandanna in the middle of the trail, and this one was pink, but it was a light pink instead of the dark pink I had dropped. Very odd. I never found mine, all I can figure is that someone decided that they would rather have my pink one and exchanged it for theirs.
By the time I had reached the lower switchbacks I was starting to get comments from hikers about how I was looking great and good luck at the race. I guess the assumption was I had to be training for the marathon... which I'd like to do someday... maybe. I'm not sure I would like being that crowded on the trail. I finished up before the rain hit and was amazed at how many hikers were just starting out, ominous clouds and thunder rumbles and all. I guess if you're only going a short way up it wouldn't be bad, but I hoped they were prepared!
I was thrilled at how good I felt after finishing, I never even felt the altitude and my quads felt great after the 7 mile descent. I did not want to fly home the next day!!

I managed to get up early enough to do an easy 5 mile run with Dad at Ute Valley Park before leaving for DIA. I wanted to run longer but decided that getting a shower in before boarding the plane would be a good thing. Although.... it might have meant getting a row to myself.... hmmm, something to consider for the future!

Thirsty Trail Gods

2008-08-09T18:48:00.005-05:00

After getting to my parents house in Colorado Springs on Sunday and taking a day off, I was ready to run on Monday morning! My favorite hike when I was young was Waldo Canyon, so I had put it on my list of runs I had to do while home. Dad's quads were still trashed from running down Rabbit Ears Pass, so he called his running partner Gerry to run with me while he hiked with his dog Zeke. I met Gerry when he came out to do Psycho Wyco in February, & he still talks about the mud, but not in a fond way. He has been training his butt off for the Leadville 100 so I was just crossing my fingers and hoping he wouldn't run my legs off. I was also hoping not to have any altitude issues, the canyon loop is just over 7 miles and goes from just about 7,000 ft to just over 8,000 ft and back down.
We started off up the stairs and the climb started, my legs felt pretty darn good, but it took me awhile to get my breathing & heart rate to a comfortable rhythm. Gerry took off but kindly waited for me at a trail intersection. He had me take over the lead and set pace and pretty promptly after that I tripped on god-knows-what and went ass over teakettle. I got myself picked up and inspected the damage: knees, hands, elbow, shoulder but nothing super serious. Gerry rinsed my knees off and I started off again, only to feel like I was going to puke. So I walked for a few minutes until my stomach settled down and then I felt great! The views are so breathtaking in that canyon, and Pikes Peak is my all time favorite mountain, so anytime I can come around a corner of the trail and find it spread out in front of me is a stellar day.
Gerry was telling me all about the Jemenez 50 that he had done in May, I think he was trying to warn me off it by describing how dang difficult it was, but kinda like waving a red flag in front of a bull, all it did was intrigue me. We met up with Dad & Zeke who were resting in the shade, Zeke is a great trail running dog but is getting up there in age and slowing down quite a bit. We took off again after a quick chat and shortly after that the trail gods decided that they hadn't had enough blood and Gerry went down. Damage check: hands, elbows, knees & chest. It freaked us both out a bit since it is only a few weeks until Leadville and it would suck most mightily to end up seriously injured while tapering. We slowed down and took it easy to the parking lot. It was exactly the run I was looking for in Colorado, cool morning, gorgeous views, some good hills and no bugs!

I spent the afternoon lunching and shopping downtown Colorado Springs with my mom, sister-in-law and cutest ever niece and when we got back to the house, Dad was getting ready to go out for a run with his friend Carl.
So I changed clothes real quick and headed out for another 5 mile jaunt. We ran part of the Santa Fe Trail which winds from Palmer Lake to south Colorado Springs. The American Discovery Trail Marathon is held on this trail and one I have on the schedule but it might be in jeopardy due to being broke! I was feeling pretty good so I dropped Dad & Carl and worked on some speed (I never do speedwork... I'm so lazy!) A few miles into it, I was passed by some kids on motorcycles, now the trail is closed to all motorized vehicles so the loud intrusion into my solitude made me very cranky. Me and my big mouth had to call them assholes as they passed, and I hoped that Dad had called the cops on 'em. I hung out and waited for Dad & Carl to catch up since I wasn't sure how far they were planning on going. After I hooked up with them, we continued on our way, trading complaints about the motorcycle idiots and lo and behold the said idiots were coming down the trail on foot. As we passed we all exchanged the stink eye and Dad said they were probably coming back to kick my ass for calling them assholes! (I think they were just looking for a place to get high) As we got a bit further up the trail we came across their bikes, and I so wanted to knock them over or drag them off into the weeds so they had to hunt for them but that idea got ixnayed by Dad. I stuck with the guys for the rest of the run in any case! After that run I was ready to eat and relax on my parents deck while gazing at the mountains.

Wild West Relay

2008-08-07T12:03:00.004-05:00

Back in February while talking with my Uncle Kevin about my tax shit (YAY for a family full of accountants!), he mentioned wanting to run this relay in August with a team full of family members. I immediately told him I was on board.. what was there to think about? A vacation in Colorado that revolved around running 195 miles from Ft Collins to Steamboat with my crazy family? That's a no brainer! The Wild West Relay was put on my calender. As time went on, I would hear bits and pieces through my dad, but remained in the dark about most things until, oh pretty much the day before the race. Somehow I didn't end up on the email list so missed out on most of the discussions and most importantly the leg assignments! Yipes! That would come back to haunt me about 10 am on Saturday Aug 2.

I got up at the ungodly hour of 4 am on Thursday to catch my flight to DIA, when I originally booked my flight I figured, the earlier I got into Denver the better. Dad could pick me up and we could head right to Ft Collins (maybe with a stop at REI on the way)... what I failed to consider was that we had to pick up Uncle Patrick from the airport also. He got in at the totally civilized hour of noon, so I hung out at DIA from 7 am to noon. I would also like to add that this was the very first flight I've ever taken that was EARLY! Yep, that's right folks, my plane was 15 minutes early. So tack on anther 15 minutes of sitting. I spent plenty of time people watching and reading, texting my friend Christy and freezing my ass off. DIA has a very fine air conditioner unit. Dad showed up about 10:30, saving me from total boredom and bringing me plums and tangerines.. my hero! (fruit and veggies are in short supply at airports... actually I take that back, I could have bought a banana for almost $2... that's 1 banana for $2.. yikes!) We finally collected Uncle Patrick and we were on our way to Ft Collins. Dad & Patrick spent most of the trip getting warmed up for the Shaw-harrass-a-thon that goes on whenever at least 2 Shaws get together. They practiced on Uncle Greg who wasn't even there to defend himself!

We reached Uncle Kevin's house, ate some lunch that Aunt Judy put together for us and then headed off to pick up our rented mini vans for the weekend. When we got to the place, the owner mentioned that he'd just gotten in a big conversion van if we were interested, it would be an extra $20 a day... we took one look at it and us 4 decided we'd kick in the extra $40 to live in comfort. So we had a sweet van with a DVD player and LOTS more room. A quick stop at Whole Foods and we were ready for our mandatory meeting to meet the other team mates, gather gear and sign waivers. When we got to Pinky's house it was a big blur of new faces and forgotten names. Jenna & Stephanie were the poor girls that were assigned to our van, I was just hoping they could handle the "Shaw effect". The most important part of the evening came quickly though... Uncle Patrick and I had to duel it out as to who got the hardest legs and who got the 2 hardest.... I'm not entirely sure how 2 flatlanders got stuck with the hardest legs!! There was a bunch of bitching, whining & crying and when the dust had settled I ended up with the legs that went over both passes (Sand Creek Pass & Rabbit Ears Pass), I figured it's all good training for upcoming races! The party broke up early so everyone could get some sleep since it would be in short supply the next night and we had an early morning start.

The next morning was kind of a comedy of errors as the guys tried to decide what was necessary to bring along and how to fit it all in... I had to keep reminding them that we still had 2 other girls stuff to fit in too! Finally we got everything & everyone in and we were on our way to the start.. the other van had to be there first since they were "active" for the first 6 legs and had to turn in all our paperwork. We were showing up to snap some pictures as a team and cheer on our first runner and then we were able to take it easy for 5 hours. The start line was a riot of decorated vans, matching teams & confusion. Fun! After we cheered off the 7:30 starters and the other van took off to the first relay point, our van retired to the nearest coffee shop to chill for awhile. My uncles & Dad promptly started insulting each other and after just a few quick seconds, Jenna & Stephanie joined in happily... whew! It was a relief to know that they were going to fit in just fine. It was also a relief to find out that they were of a more liberal bent then the rest of my family... I was beginning to feel a bit out numbered! We hung out and drank coffee (or in my case a yummy fruit smoothie) for a bit and then figured we get to our transfer point.

A quick drive and a few minutes to find a parking spot and the waiting started. It was heating up quickly and we heard rumours of temperatures in the upper 100's. Yikes! We spent the time decorating our van with glass paint, lying around insulting each other and waiting in super long lines for the porta potties. We figured that our runner would probably arrive around noon and sure enough, right around that time our other van showed up and told me I had about 20 minutes till go time. One last wait in line for the pottie and I was good to go. My first leg was the easy one, only 3.6 miles and it was classified as "medium" on the difficulty chart. Honestly it should have been classified as "easy". The thing that made it hard for me was the heat & my non adjustment to the altitude... it was baking hot on that road and not a single bit of shade anywhere. When I started running my heart rate skyrocketed I was having trouble finding my rhythmic breathing pattern, and my mouth was instantly dry and parched. By the end I was really dreading my next leg and questioning my sanity! I bumped knuckles with Jenna and she was off into the heat. I grabbed some water, climbed into the van and we were off to the next point. The next few hours were a blur of driving, then waiting, and a flurry of activity when our runner came in and the next went off. The heat kept climbing and everyone was feeling pretty wretched out there. 4 of the runners in our van had their hardest legs of the relay first off and they were made harder by the temps over 100 degrees. About 5 pm we made it into the transfer point and hooked up with our other van and made the trade off. They figured it would be about midnight when we saw then again.
We stretched out some sleeping bags in the shade and tried to get a bit of sleep but it was way too noisy so after about an hour we headed out to the next transfer point. It was really lucky we left when we did since we had to take a 40 mile, 2 hour detour to get to the transfer point. The roads the runners were on in this section were super dusty and narrow so to keep the dust from killing the runners they had to detour the inactive vans. When we reached our transfer point (Woods Landing) it was a nice camping area with a diner/bar and they were serving a pasta dinner for the runners. After everyone ate we stretched out the sleeping bags again in a field and napped, this time I slept for an hour or so but got paranoid that we would miss our runner and ended up spending a lot of time looking up at the amazing night sky. The stars were so incredibly bright, living in Kansas City, I forget how riveting the night sky is. I saw shooting stars, satellites and planes while laying there, and even the odd UFO, but that could have been when I was dozing. Finally around midnight I got up for good and got myself ready to run and about 10 minutes later our other van showed up and told me I had about 40 minutes to go time. By this time the temps had dropped into the 50's and I was feeling much better about this leg. (Of course the few sips of coffee I had might have contributed to my feeling fabulous. I haven't had a drop of caffeine in over a year and 1/2 so it was like fucking rocket fuel for me.)

This leg was considered "very hard", 8.8 miles up Sand Creek Pass, from 7,464 ft to 9,126 ft. My headlamp was giving me issues for the first mile or so and my van had to pull over to swap up for a different one. Since it was pitch dark and pretty darn remote for the first few miles my van shadowed me until I waved them on to the relay point. It was amazing once they had taken off, it was pitch black, I was running up a mountain pass with the most incredible starry sky above me. I kept turning off my headlamp and just enjoyed running in the cool, quiet dark. I could have kept running like that forever. All too soon I came up on my relay point and I was sad to see this leg come to an end. I bumped knucks with Jenna and she was off. I climbed into the van, covered up with a sleeping bag and dozed on and off for the next 5 hours. The night was more difficult to spot our runners and be ready, but the low temps made it so much easier to run. I think our thermometer showed temps as low as 39 degrees... I was grateful for the sweatshirt I had brought! I have no idea what time we made it to our transfer point since I had fallen asleep after our last leg started and didn't wake up until after the next van had already started. When I woke up Dad was sound asleep in the van and Uncle Kevin & Patrick were asleep on a soccer field, and the girls were getting ready to take a shower. The North Park High School was selling access to their showers for $3 a person... what a bargain! I jumped at the chance to be clean and brush my teeth, so we spent a nice time luxuriating in water and soap. When we got done we got the guys up and went on to the next transfer point. Since the heat of the day before had slowed so many teams down, they were allowing teams to "stack", in other words, even though our other van still had runners running, we could go ahead and start our legs. It was a good thing since it was forecast to be another scorcher.

So at about 9 am I started on my last leg. This leg was classified as "hard", 5.7 miles over Rabbit Ears Pass, 8,552 ft up to 9,432 ft. The tag line for the Wild West Relay is "Get your ass over the Pass" and this is the Pass they are talking about! This leg kicked my ass, I don't know why it hit me so hard, but I got seriously altitude sick, I was head achy, nauseous, and dizzy as all get out. It might have been a combo of very little sleep, altitude, and heat but every time I started to run hard, I started weaving all over the road and seeing little twinkly stars in my vision. Not good. I was reduced to walking really hard over the pass. I was still pulling 12 minute miles for the most part but I when I started to run, I would come close to passing out. This leg sucked not just for how I was feeling, but the cars & trucks coming down the pass had no interest in giving me any room. There was a fairly wide shoulder but I was in fear for my skin a few times, that plus the stinky emissions reminded me again why I love the trails so much. Finally I stumbled my way to the top and Jenna was off and running. I stayed upright long enough to get a picture taken with Dad and then I promptly got horizontal. As we started to go down in altitude I started feeling better, and by the time we hit Steamboat I was feeling human again, a mild lingering headache was the only aftereffect. At the beginning of the race I had planned on running the very last leg with Stephanie (who's leg it actually was) and Uncle Patrick, but decided to bow out. At last Uncle Kevin came into sight, bumped knuckles with Stephanie and they were off on the very last leg.

We drove into Steamboat, met up with the other van, everybody put on their team shirts and waited for Stephanie & Patrick to appear so we could all run over the line together. They quickly came into sight and before we knew it, we were over the line and posing for pictures. Whew! Done! They were serving a BBQ for the runners, and they obviously knew I was coming since they had watermelon. A bunch of my team mates are silly and don't know the magical properties of watermelon, so I was more than happy to eat their pieces. The original plan was to have a few beers before heading back to Ft Collins, but we decided that alcohol combined with sleep deprivation would be a bad combination with driving. So we jumped into the vans and headed back.
It was a great time and I really enjoyed spending time with my Uncles and Dad, I am blessed to have such a great family and it was really a special time, even when the harassment and insults reached a new peak. Everyone on our team ran their hearts out, we had a huge variety of backgrounds and abilities and everyone did amazing! I regret not getting to know the people in the other van much, the 10 minute chat session every 5 hours wasn't very conducive to close friendships. Kelly did a fantastic job at organizing things, she really worked her butt off and it all went so smoothly. At first I thought that there was no way I'd do it again, but after a few days of thinking about it, I realized I wanted the chance to run over Sand Creek Pass again in the dark, and I definitely have a score to settle with Rabbit Ears Pass. Next year I'm coming out a few days early so I can do some altitude adjustment and I'm hoping it won't be record breaking temps either. It was a very well put on race and a lot of fun, I would totally recommend it for anyone looking for a challenging relay race. The scenery can't be beat!

I'm home!

2008-08-07T11:45:00.003-05:00

I'm back from Colorado where I spent a week running my butt off and spending lots of quality time with my family, I will be posting a race report from the Wild West Relay and pictures of gorgeous mountain runs that I did just to make everyone jealous!

Thanks to everyone who has donated to the Save the Boobies fund... you guys and gals ROCK!! Much love, kisses & mud to you all!

SAVE THE BOOBIES!!

2008-07-29T12:47:00.003-05:00

So next Sunday August 10th is the Susan G Komen Breast Cancer 5K run. My friend Travis, who did the wonderful Mud Babes design asked me to be on his team in memory of his mom, Cindy, who died in 1994. I'm hoping that all of my wonderful imaginary and real life friends will find it in their hearts to donate a small (or large) bit of money to help with breast cancer research. If you are so inclined you can donate here.

I've been very lucky up to this point to not have been touched by breast cancer... it's not in my family nor have I personally known anyone who has had it, so I've been rather blase about it. I've never had a mammogram done nor do I do the monthly breast exams.. hell I only see a Dr. once every 6 years or so. Stupid , silly me. So when my friend Abby was diagnosed with b.c just last week, it scared the shit out of me. So I've promised myself to take better care of myself.. IE: I will do monthly self exams, and even though I don't have health insurance I will find the money to get yearly checkups and I will stop thinking of myself as invincible. How about you?

Sunday run in Pictures

2008-07-27T15:59:00.000-05:00

I chose to do a road run this morning since the trails I was planning to run were closed due to the monsoon of rain we received last night. I picked up a cute cyclist along on the way and he even bought me breakfast! You certainly don't find that on the trails!

more Sunday run in pictures

2008-07-27T15:53:00.000-05:00

yet even more Sunday run pictures

2008-07-27T15:52:00.000-05:00

2008-07-23T22:20:00.004-05:00

Ever have a day when you've recieved so much bad news that you can feel it physically? Today was one of those days, I feel like someone was pounding on me with big sticks.
One of my dearest and oldest friends, Christina, gave me the wretched news today that her father has cancer and only has days to live. Her dad is one of the good guys. I don't know how many times I asked to be adopted into their family, because they are the textbook perfect family. The 4 of them (Christina, her sister, mom & dad) are ridicously close, ridicously beautiful people, and hands down the most loving, caring, sweet, wonderful people you will ever meet. This family does not know the meaning of the word "stranger" within moments of meeting them, you are a friend. My heart is breaking for them. This world will be a much poorer place when Gil is gone. But leave it to them to manage to be uplifting in the time of darkest sorrow... he said that he had no regrets. I can only hope that on my death bed I can look back and say "no regrets".
That was punch number 1

Punch number 2 took place this evening when we got a phone call from yet another friend informing us that his wife has breast cancer. It's a very aggressive form of B.C. , she's starting treatment right away. I would give anything for a magic wand right now to make everything better. There's nothing I can do but pray, pray, pray and send all my healing, strong energies to her.

Spiders, Snakes & Skunks Oh My!

2008-07-20T22:40:00.003-05:00

The alarm went off at an ungodly hour of 6:30... usually that isn't ungodly for me, but after being up until 3 am on Saturday morning due to the Lunar Trek Race, grabbing about 5 hours of sleep, working Saturday night and then going to a bar to see my husbands band play, I was pretty whupped. I had made a promise to be out at Clinton Lake by 8, so I got up, got dressed, and got out of the house pretty quick before I crawled back in bed. On the drive to Lawrence I was feeling pretty good, and then the phone calls and text messages started... "umm, I'm not going to make it today" says everyone... by then I was already 1/2 an hour into my drive so it looked like I would run 10 miles by myself. Christy called and said she was just running late and would catch up with me at some point. We decided to do the white trail and she would meet up with me somewhere after the 5 mile turnaround.
When I got the trailhead, the parking lot was almost empty except for 2 mountain bikers getting ready to go... I procrastinated hoping that they would start before me and knock down all the spiderwebs.... just my luck they took the blue trail... Damn! I got through the first mile with only a minimum of screeching, but at mile 2 things got ugly. The webs were thick and the spiders were hanging out in the middle of most of them. Have I mentioned that I hate spiders? I spent a good chunk of my morning screaming like a little girl, dancing around and throwing my hat on the ground, I'm sure I looked like an idiot! One of the lessons that I learned in kindergarten was never to run with sharp objects.... well, I apologize to Mrs. Gedwellis for totally ignoring her rules.... I ran with a long pointy stick today and it was good. I continued the "looking like an idiot" trend as I ran along waving a long pointy stick in front of me. This worked quite well and I became quite fond of my friend the spider moving stick when I rounded a corner to find a momma skunk and her cute little baby waddling down the trail towards me.... I dropped my stick with a shriek and retreated quickly. She kept coming at me so I moved further away and hissed at her hoping she would move off... she turned around and raised her tail at me so I decided it was time to do a sprint interval. She held off squrting, decided the trail wasn't a nice place to be today and she and the baby headed off into the trees. Phew! I got lucky!
I couldn't find my stick again, so I picked out a new best friend and got to the 5 mile marker with a minimum of webbage. I turned around and left my stick behind, hoping that the spiders didn't have time to rebuild all that I had knocked down. I picked up some speed since I didn't have to worry about poking an eye out anymore. About a mile and 1/2 down the trail, I came upon Christy, and whatever webs I had missed, she took care of. She had also seen a copperhead slithering off into the bushes so we kept a weather eye out for him. We gossiped and rehashed last nights race for a few miles until I came to a screeching halt. A huge black snake was crossing the trail... this guy was as big around as my arm and was long enough that we both stood in the middle of the trail and squealed for what seemed like minutes. Yikes! We picked up the pace and made it back to the cars with no further wildlife encounters. Today I decided that I prefer to run with the Trail Nerds at Clinton, most notably the tall, fast Nerds who break webs and scare away all the other wildlife before I get there.

Howling at the Moon at the Lunar Trek Run

2008-07-19T18:11:00.006-05:00

Late Friday afternoon, Christy "Mountain" Mud Babe and I left Lawrence for the bustling metropolis of Scandia, KS. Located somewhere way too close to the Nebraska border, it's about a 3 1/2 hour drive from Lawrence. The forecast called for overcast skies and heavy rain and since we were heading to do a night race called the Lunar Trek, it was a bit disheartening to think we were not going to be able to howl at the full moon. Luckily about an hour east of Lawrence, the clouds parted to reveal and gorgeous blue sky...we crossed our fingers and hoped it would stay like that. We rolled into town early enough to get a hotel room and try and get a 1/2 hour nap in, the nap didn't work so well and neither did the eating plan. Since the race started at 11 pm, we were totally thrown off and not sure what to eat or when so we ended up nibbling on some strawberries, cherries and bananas.
It was about 8 miles from the hotel to the race start and unfortunately in our haste to get there a cute little raccoon ran right under our wheels. Poor little guy, Christy and I both screamed in unison and then freaked out. Christy asked if we should go back but I figured at the best of times 'coons are cantankerous little creatures and if he was still alive, it would not be the best of times. So we kept going but it put a small damper on the evening.

After making a few loops of the town (don't sneeze) we finally found the high school and parked next to a contingent of Trail Nerds. We checked in, got our numbers and also got a 20 spiel, the race was a fundraiser for the school's cross country team and it was obvious the guy checking us in was used to lecturing high school kids. There was a billion different options you could run: 10K, 10M, 20M, 30M & 40M. I did the 20M and the rest of the Nerd gaggle was spread out from the 20m to 40M. There was a ton of Trail Nerds that came out from KC & beyond, it was a lot of fun to have so many familiar faces in one place. Gary gave us a fabulous rendition of a poem about the moon that he had written... combined with his theatrical telling of it & the setting it made for the perfect start to the race.

At close to 11, we received some last minute directions but I was too busy dicking around, harassing people, and adjusting my headlamp to listen... one of these days my propensity for not listening is going to bite me in the ass. With a Runners ready... GO, we were off, and the Mud Babes howled at the moon as we started moving. The course was all on back dirt farm roads, very wide open and we were able to see for quite a ways. Everyone was assigned a small blinking red light that we had to wear and most of us attached them to the back of our hats or packs so all we could see in front of us was a long line of flashing red lights. There was some hazy clouds in the sky but the full moon was bright enough to come shining through. My headlamp immediately was driving me crazy so I took it off and carried it... I only turned it on maybe a grand total of 10 minutes the whole race anyway. Since the roads were so wide open, the pack got strung out really quickly and we settled into a nice easy pace. For the first couple of miles it was me, Debbie, Gary, Laurie, Nick & Christy running together and then we lost Nick and Christy. Christy is nursing a bad knee and seeing a P.T a couple times a week, trying to avoid having her knee scoped so she really has to watch herself so she dropped back and Nick was doing the 30M and had a very strict timetable in mind, so he also dropped back a bit.

So Debbie, Gary, Laurie and I trotted along together, telling silly stories, singing silly songs and at one point us girls mooned the moon. Then we went through a period of singing Wizard of Oz songs and since there was 4 of us we argued over who was going to be who, I had ponytails so by default I ended up Dorothy. Gary kept running up ahead taking pictures, so I imagine we'll see lots of them on his website along with a fabulous race report. The moon was bright and beautiful and the fireflies were out in force... it was so magical running along a dark road lined with tall trees, and twinkling fireflies darting in and out.
The aid stations were great, everyone put a ton of time into them... the first one we came to had a generator running and we were greeted by a large tent all lit up, a fake lit up palm tree and portable water fountain.. it was amazing! They had the usual assortment of ultra foods and very friendly staffers. The second aid station had a camper set up and red rope lights over a tent with a big campfire and they lined the approach with candles, we were told this was the first time these people had done aid stations and they all did a bang up job. Friendly, helpful and had a good assortment of foods. My only complaint was there was no watermelon..... hello? Had they not heard how much the Mud Babes like watermelon??? We were warned about some mud on the course and we poo-pooed the warning... after all we're mud babes! Well let me say that they have some super tacky mud in Scandia, it was a whole different texture and caused much walking. The mighty Mud Babes were laid low!
When we got to the 10 mile turnaround for us 20 milers, we lost Gary, he was continuing on to 40 miles. Debbie, Laurie and I decided to stick together, and by some miracle we were the first women. Caleb, Shane, Greg & James had already blown past us, running hell bent for leather, so it looked like the Nerds were going to handily tie up the first spots in the 20m. As we were heading back out, we ran into Christy who was renaming herself the Nancy Kerrigan Mud Babe for the evening and thinking of dropping out at the 10 mile point due to extreme knee pain. The second half of the race went by with not as much talking, but still a lot of enjoyment of the surroundings, and still a lot of howling. The darkness totally threw my depth perception off and I swore we went uphill the whole 10 miles out and so we should be going downhill for the last 10 miles.... nope in fact it seemed we had more uphills. Ah well. The 3 of us decided we were going to stick together for the rest of the race, so we walked when someone needed to walk and ran and talked the rest of the time. I started to get pretty tired... 'cuz well, my bedtime is 11:00 usually so about 2 am my body was freaking out.. combined with eating very little the whole day, I was kinda hurting. All 3 of us were having some stomach problems, and some of mine cleared up when I took an S-Cap. DUH! It was a hot evening and I had forgotten that even though the sun wasn't beating down, I was still sweating like a pig. The last couple of miles all I wanted to do was lay down, my eyes were starting to have some troubles focusing too, but thankfully Debbie & Laurie kept me going. As we came around the corner of the school for the finish we linked arms, howled up a storm and crossed together. Whoo-Hoo! We were cheered on by Caleb & Shane & Christy. Christy had made it to mile 15 before pulling the plug, and was cheering everyone on with a big ol' icebag on her knee. I think I heard the guy say 3:45.. but I'll update once the results are posted.
We hung out in the parking lot for awhile, re-hashing the race, decompressing and enjoying a post race bevvie before heading back to the hotel to get some sleep. In all my wisdom I scheduled myself to work at 4 pm on Saturday, so we had to get sleep so we could head back fairly early. It was such a fun time and the Trail Nerds make everything a party... I can't wait to do this race again next year!

Photos shamelessly stolen from Gary Henry & Andy Woolard

YAY!!

2008-07-18T10:03:00.002-05:00

Happy Dance!! I got into the Heartland 50 miler before it filled up! Whoo-Hoo!! Now I got lots and lots of training to do! (big huge gulp)

2008-07-17T12:22:00.003-05:00

Last night was a fun and easy 5 and change out at Clinton lake again. It was a beautiful evening, and we had snacks while we were running... the bugs were out in full force and there was no way to avoid eating the odd one. I even at one point sucked one up my nose... they may be raw, but they certainly aren't vegan. Debbie brought her husband with for the first time, it's always nice to have confirmation that your running partners aren't lying about having husbands and wives. He did great and seemed to have a good time, we had to initiate him with mud of course. We gave him a mud tattoo and took turns slapping it in real good so now we are all mud brothers and sisters which is much safer than blood brothers and sisters. The last mile turned into a fast game of tag and then Debbie & I hid in the bushes and jumped out and chased everyone while roaring like bears. Everyone seemed to be full of pent up 5th grade type energy. Earlier in the run there had been lots of 5th grade humour and even a couple of "mommmmm, he's touching me!" & "I'm telling" type yells. Sometimes it just feels great to let your inner child out to run as fast and as far as it wants.
Afterwards we fed our adult selves with some margaritas and mexican food at a cute little place somewhere in Lawrence.. it has a great patio so we could continue to be loud and semi-obnoxious and not disturb a whole restaraunt. Trains were rumbling by on a regular basis so the conversation was punctuated with a lot of "WHAT DID YOU SAY???" It was a fabulous way to spend a warm Wednesday evening.

We're all off to Scandia KS tomorow for the Lunar Trek Race.... it starts at 11 pm, so cross your fingers we have a clear night so the full moon is nice and bright!

2008-07-14T20:12:00.002-05:00

As usual, I had a super fun running weekend... have I mentioned how much I love the people I run with? There is a pretty solid core group and a bunch of different people that rotate in and out depending on schedules and mileage, and they are all great. Seriously I have not yet met a single person that I don't like and wouldn't give my left kidney to. (Well, maybe not my kidney, but I'd sure give them some blood or bone marrow!)

Saturday's run was at Clinton Lake as usual and this week the ladies outnumbered the guys big time! We had 7 girls and 3 guys... lucky guys! It started out as a beautiful sunny morning, and we had brought plenty of food and drinks to party in the park after the run. We took it easy and stayed together as a group, chatting, telling stories, and trading comments on last weeks race. When we got to mile 5, 3 of the girls turned around to head back to the cars, they said they'd go get coffee and would be back for the after run party. The rest of us continued on and at about mile 8 the skies opened up on us, we were under some pretty heavy canopy so it sounded awesome and we remained fairly dry for awhile. At mile 10, 5 us headed back on the blue trail which heads back to the cars but in a more direct route, so we'd do a total of 16 miles. Sophia & Jeremy wanted a full 20 so they headed back on the white trail. By this point it was raining really steadily but it felt great, nice and cool, and I found myself drinking very little and I only took 1 S-cap the whole day... it was great!
I was running in a new pair of shoes that I picked up on clearance at Gary Gribbles last Friday. It was a huge mistake to help out at packet pickup for Psycho Psummer, I couldn't hang out in a running store for 5 hours and not end up wandering over to the shoes at some point! So I picked up a pair of La Sportiva Fireblades, they didn't have any size 6's but the guy working said they ran pretty small, so I tried a 6.5, and they fit pretty good. I got them good and muddy on Wednesday night out at Wyco Park and liked them enough to take 'em on a 15 mile trot. They were pretty good until the rocks got really wet and slickery, I slid around a bit more than I liked but it was darn wet and I'm not sure any of my shoes would have kept me from sliding. I like how lightweight they are and I had no shin problems, so I'll put them in rotation and hope they end up being a favorite.
When we got back to the cars it was still pouring rain so we set up the food and drinks under one of the picnic shelters. As soon as we stopped running everyone started freezing so we wrapped up in towels, sweatshirts, blankets, whatever we could find in the trunks. It was really crazy to be freezing our butts off in July in Kansas City... it's supposed to be in the 90's!! With blue lips and chattering teeth we sipped our "pineapple panty rippers" thoughtfully concocted by Gary and ate the vast amounts of food provided by everyone. Debbie had even made a spiked watermelon! After a few drinks, Debbie and Julie admitted that after they turned around at mile 5 they got a wild hair and took off all their clothes and ran about a mile of the trail naked in the rain!! I think their new mud babe names are the Nekkid Mud Babes!

On Sunday I ran at Wyco Park with a considerably smaller group, 3 guys and 2 of us girls. The guys were feeling their oats and started out really fast. Jonette and I stuck together... well kinda. Jonette won the women's 50K race last weekend and is much, much faster than me, so I just kinda hung on for dear life. My legs were super tired and I just never felt warmed up until the last 2.5 miles which is my favorite part of the course... the muddy part of course! I had never run with Jonette before so it was nice to find out a bit about her (the times when I was close enough to hear her talk!) We got in 13 miles, and I was shot for the restof the day. Husband & I took a trip to Home Depot to get more stuff for "my" room which is still not done 'cuz when you have a 100 year old house nothing is easy. Then I napped for a good 2 hours in the afternoon and went to bed early. It was kinda nice to be really lazy and not do anything. Friday night is the Lunar Trek and I'm really excited to run in the dark, I hope the skies are clear so the moon is super bright!