Hunting for Adventure

  Ironman Florida 2020 Racing in a Pandemic It was a weird race from the beginning… the anxiety leading up to it that it may be cancelled very last minute, or that work wouldn’t allow us to travel… I mean after all, no other Ironman (full distance) races had gone off in 2020 (and would not), and only one other 70.3 had occurred (Arizona), so we were not feeling optimistic. But as the days dwindled down and it was finally the day to drive down, Kit and I were cautiously optimistic. Luckily, Florida was a place where covid cases were actually very low, and with us driving and staying in a complete house to ourselves, we felt as safe as anything. The drive down wasn’t bad, and it was so nice to be in our familiar area of 30-A, Rosemary and a place connected to so many memories for us. We enjoyed a few lazy days resting at the beach and going through the motions of check in before it was finally race day. Pre Race    The race started at 11am, a super weird experience and one I’ve n

Run The Bluegrass 2020 2020 has been a weird year, and honestly this race wasn’t even on my radar despite being in my backyard. The lack of racing this year has interestingly somehow turned into more of a run focus year, and I’ve really enjoyed that. When my work schedule worked out to have race day off, and I was able to finagle a bib in the already sold out race, I decided that despite the tough course it was meant to be. I definitely had the base and fitness to have a strong race, and potentially to get my goal of sub-1:35 (previous PR 1:40), however this course featured nearly 1000k feet of elevation change with my previous PR on VERY flat ground.   I was feeling very confident about my training, fitness and build leading into the race. Having a big run year and keeping relatively high mileage played in my favor as there wasn’t much extra I had to add. I had two key workouts prior to the race that I think really set me up well- one being a 9 mile tempo run at my favorite (sarcasm

83.4 Challenge Weekend (Fall Creek Falls Half Iron/Half Marathon Weekend) I’ll be honest it’s been so long since a race that I’d forgotten what race reports were…   I can still vividly recall the day in March when my husband Kit and I were checked into a flight to head to Ironman Puerto Rico, and literally as packing up to go to the airport, our world was rocked, well along with the rest of the world. Things escalated quickly, from the race cancelled, to the flight cancelled, to a torrential downpour and trip to the airport in the downpour to get a refund for our flight—I should have taken this as a sign of things to come, because while at this stage we thought coronavirus would be a blip or minor roadblock in 2020, it has turned into something much much bigger.  I could probably write an entire separate blog post on how much this pandemic has changed the face of life this year in so many ways, so many hopes, and race dreams of 2020 have vanished along with motivation to train some

LLTH 50k Race Report Backstory So maybe this idea wasn’t the best of ideas. My coach and friend, Erin and I had decided a few months back to sign up for LLTH 50k (as a first ever ultra marathon) as a “fun day out” and “victory lap” after our planned winter A race marathon at A1A in Fort Lauderdale just two weeks prior (13 days to be exact). We were also able to persuade another running friend, Wendy, to join in the adventure and run the 50k with us. Now you may wonder what sort of crazy breed of people classify 50k races in their list of things to do in “fun day out”… yep sometimes I wonder that too, but I continue to find enjoyment in pushing my own limit and having new experiences. As luck would have it, I’ve found a pretty good set of friends in the Lexington community who like that too. Given how recently I had raced a hard marathon and never having run a trail race much less an ultra marathon, my goals were never to race this event and strictly as follows— 1) experien