Today Got Me Thinking About Freedom

When I started my run this morning, I felt as I had during all of my runs from the past 3 weeks. Thanks to moving from sea level to about 6000 feet in Colorado, my lungs work what feels like triple time. I am sluggish and slow. My rating of perceived exertion (RPE) is much higher than normal, for both the pace and the heart rate.  This morning, a bit frustrated with the slowness, I decided to throw in a few 1 minute pickups to at least get some turnover happening in my legs. The first one felt truly like …

Survival of the Fittest: Silver Rush 50 Race Report

When I signed up for the Silver Rush 50, which starts in Leadville, Colorado, I had one goal: Survive. Don’t believe me? Here’s how I entered it in TrainingPeaks: I usually have somewhat more ambitious goals, but when it came to Silver Rush 50, survival sounded about as ambitious as it comes. I ditched all thoughts of competition and kept my focus simple: don’t die and cross the finish line. Silver Rush 50 treats the runners to about 7600 feet of climbing. But, it’s not the elevation gain, it’s the altitude, which includes 4 trips up to 12,000 feet altitude – …

Dreaming Big Isn’t Glamorous

I blew a snot rocket, carefully positioning my head with the wind and timing the blow with the rhythm of my footsteps. It was a miserable late winter day, with strong winds and little ice pellets that couldn’t decide if they wanted to be rain or snow. They bounced off the track as they fell from the sky. I dodged little patches of ice on the track, taking note of their location as I looped, then looped again. I was alone with my thoughts and a series of pyramid repeats – ranging from 200 to 1200 yards. Of course, I was …

Why do you run so much?

“Pushing your body past what you thought it was capable of is easy; the hard part is pushing yourself even further, past what your mind wants to let you. That’s what ultrarunning is all about; introducing you to a self you’ve never known.” ~ Rex Pace Running has been a friend of mine since I was about 12 years old. I originally took to running to “burn calories.” I wanted to achieve some sort of teen-tastic, unrealistic image of what I was supposed to look like. I was a 90-something-pound teenager with all sorts of destructive disordered eating habits. I remember hoping …

What have I learned?

No matter how much experience I gain, there is always something new to learn. That is part of the appeal of endurance sport – it never gets boring. After a race or an especially challenging training session, my Coach Steve Pye’s first question was: “What did you learn?” This question is the best one we can ask ourselves each day if we want to make our path forward on this journey meaningful. This season has rubbed me pretty raw emotionally, physically, and tactically. All of that rubbing has exposed some valuable lessons, which I’m finding especially useful as I make the final, …

Eat the elephant one bite at a time 

I started my run on Sunday morning, and I wasn’t more than 20 steps in when I began to hear the voices. My legs are really sore. Why does this feel so hard if I’m running so slow? How am I going to do today’s workout feeling like this? Was that noise my joints popping?!  Ugh. It’s windy.  You know these voices, right? I bet you’ve heard them a time or a hundred. The day before, I had ridden four hours at a base ironman effort – but with a series of FTP intervals interspersed throughout. Fifty-five minutes worth of …

Philadelphia Freedom

As I ran the final 10k of the 2016 Philadelphia Marathon, the wind swirled, but thankfully at this point, mostly in a tailwind direction. A smile snaked its way around my face. I felt ah-maze-ing. My careful pacing paid off. I felt the strongest I had ever felt in the final 10k of a marathon. Truthfully: it was the best I had felt running in a year or so! I ran the first half of the marathon with a fair bit of discipline – which is challenging when you feel fresh, and the spectators that line the city streets entice you to push …

The Turtle Hunts The Hare: Journeys in Finding Speed, Part 2

Ya’ll, trying to get this endurance turtle to become a speedy hare is hard work. Right about now, I’m am cussing myself out for letting what snippets of speediness I had go by the wayside as I trained long, and then longer still over the past two years. Over the past several weeks, I’ve dabbled in the “delights” of shorter course racing with one sprint triathlon ( and one olympic-equivalent 7-stage triathlon (Survival of the Mills). These were fun, local races and I was able to race well. Survival of the Mills, in particular, was an incredibly fun race that mixed trail runs with …

Is this Normal?

Several years ago, I wrote about the joy of the first time finish line, as a reflection of my first Ironman. Not many race experiences can compare with that feeling that takes over the first time you cross the finish line of an unknown distance or event. It’s empowering. It’s extraordinary. It’s addicting. But, the road to that first (or second or twentieth) time finish line is filled often with uncertainty, confusion, and a healthy dose of fear. As we get deeper into the season, some of the athletes I coach are doing things they’ve never done before: longest distances, hardest efforts, first time events. …

What’s my story?

Readers, forgive me. It’s been two months since my last post. This is the point where you, my readers, absolve me of my blog transgressions. I’ll wait. … Okay, thanks. It’s not that I’ve been at a loss for words – far from it. My draft folder is FULL of the ideas I’ve had since my last post about the Double Anvil. To mention just a few, I’ve got drafts (soon to be posts) about our run across Zion National Park, what our food shopping list looks like, what it’s like to train for a Double Anvil, how to gear up for a …