Just Plodding Along

We knew it was a possibility. With 8 newbies running a relay and not just any relay, one of the most difficult it seemed highly likely. I guess in the perfect 20/20 hindsight of the whole event when we were assigned the 5:45 start time maybe I should have requested that we be moved to 5 a.m. But would that extra 45 minutes have even mattered. Maybe not, maybe yes. Good Girls Gone Trail happily cross the finish line.  I mean what you have to understand is that this relay is freakin hard. Sure the legs are rated easy, moderate, challenging and hard. But my view of easy and the race director's view of easy are very, very different. Just to clear up any confusion I have described what each of those ratings actually mean: Easy = there will be hills, which means lucky you there will be some downhill but not as much as the uphill and some point during that uphill you will cry for your mama. Moderate = Remember when you cried for your mama, how naive you were back when you wer...

The thing about relays is that they just keep happening. Leg after leg. There is a sense of once one of your legs is done there is the immediate pressure of the next leg looming ahead. Now this particular feeling occurred more often for our team due to the fact their was only 8 of us instead of 12. This meant that several of us had five legs to complete and around 30 miles. I think in the end this probably slowed us down. It is hard to fight the fatigue especially with little to no sleep. Cathy ready to run! Even with the pressure of the next looming leg it was always exciting to see our runner charging up to the exchange for the hand-off. My teammates may disagree but I think in the end the exchanges were an area we could have done a bit better. Corrie finishing her last leg uphill. Seemed like most of the legs finished uphill. Actually seems like most of the relay was uphill. In the beginning we were really good at being ready for the runner coming in with the next runne...

This past weekend has been amazing. It was so much fun and so hard at the same time. I could not have had a better group of women to experience it with. Each one of these amazing ladies gave it their all every leg. I could not be more proud of them and us and I could not be more happy that we decided to have this adventure! I guess you start at the beginning. Thursday, after driving several hours and picking up our awesome van driver Sarah and other teammate Mary we headed to Brevard North Carolina to load up the van with food and hit the packet pick-up at Oskar Blues Brewery.  After some serious planning and eating some dinner from the delicious food truck the race organizers brought in we headed back to the hotel to make sure we got some good rest before we started the relay at 5:45 the next morning.  4:30 Friday morning we packed ourselves into the 15 passenger rental van and our teammate Kelcey's SUV and headed to Pink Beds, N.C. start line. And...

After several hours of crazy mountain roads, a rental van pick-up/teammate meet-up and a stop for lunch Good Girls Gone Trail has arrived in Brevard, N.C. ready to tackle the Smoky Mountain Relay!

This morning I went trail running.I love it so much every time. It is just so dang fun. And now I have trail shoes which makes it even more fun and less painful on the feet and ankles. Because I am dense I was skeptical that trail shoes would make a world of difference. They do! And unlike brand new road shoes, when your new trail shoes get all muddy and wet you are excited and think good job self, well done.  After frolicking through the trails singing the hills are alive (just kidding I was cursing at all the hills, Georgia is so hilly, who knew) it was time to pack for......THE RELAY!!!!! Hey true story hardest part of packing is my giant ass shoes. Big footed runner problems.My shoes take up more space than five running outfits. Two more sleeps and we are on our way to North Carolina! Can't wait!

For the last few months I and eight other awesome ladies have been getting ready to head up to North Carolina to run (or drive, thanks Sarah!) the Smoky Mountain Relay. We thought we would share some of our relay knowledge gained for those of you thinking of doing one yourself. 1) Pick awesome people to be on your team. If you can find someone who is good at getting sponsors, someone who is super organized, someone who has great attention to detail, someone who has a lot of common sense, and someone who is super calm about everything your team is pretty perfect and has all bases covered. Each person on your team is gonna bring something special to the party and that is what makes relays exciting! It is a group effort. A little relay planning a little wine- perfect evening. 2) Distribute tasks. You have a whole team. Let everyone contribute to the effort whether it is organizing the legs or gathering some supplies. No need to dump everything on one person. This is easier when yo...

and I am still sore from trail running on Sunday. In weird places too. My obliques are killing me. And I have some weird bruises from eating dirt once during like mile 4. Always good to get the falling out of the way early. That way for the rest of the run you look super tough scraped up and covered in dirt. Or at least that is what I kept telling myself I looked like. Most likely I just looked super sweaty and exhausted.  But it is just so dang fun I can't wait to do it again! Trail running just seems more exciting. Like you are on an adventure. And as long as you know where you are or are with people who know where they are it won't turn into the kind of adventure that winds up with you on the news because you are lost in the woods. This is key to trail running I think. My hope is to do lots of trail running this summer. I even have a list of places I want to go: Pine Mountain Providence Canyon Back to Chewacla State Park Flate Rock Park Any other trail ...

Best start to a Friday. Gather five awesome friends and hit the trail for seven miles of fun. At first it was dark and a little scary but good practice for running in the dark during the relay. Note to self: need brighter headlamp. Awesome friends and a nice sunrise equals happy for the rest of the day! Photo Credit: Nicole! Photo Credit: Dana! Happy Friday!

Yesterday I decided that my foot/ankle felt good enough to try running plus two of my favorite people to run with were running near by this morning. I got up early and headed up the street with a creepy grin on my face and I ran and at first my foot felt tight and then it felt fine and was glorious. That is all. Have a great day.

So I have been cross training forever. Okay for about a week. BUT LIKE FOREVER. And I am over it. My typical day looks like: -one to two mile walk with Max -Pilates for an hour or Yoga - Bike or Swim for 30 min to an hour...basically as long as I can stand it (I don't see any sort of triathlon greatness in my future FYI).  Yes this is good for me. Yes it is good for tendinitis. But I super miss running so am gonna whine about it. Max is really enjoying me being injured because he is all about the walking so is happy to help me rehab. He is also all about yoga mats. Every time one is rolled out he runs over to lay on it. Cute....but not super helpful. He has got Shavasana down. But the good news is my tendon is not swollen anymore and feels almost 100% better. I see an easy run coming up in my future. And I say it every single time I get injured. I should do more cross training for overall fitness/ strength. I am totally gonna keep this up.....guess we sha...

After getting back home from the Scottsboro Half marathon Saturday night I volunteered at Operation Endurance. Operation Endurance is a 6 hour, 12 hour and 24 hour race that takes place on Fort Benning and benefits the House of Hero s foundation and has an amazing race director . Now some of you might remember I had toyed with the idea of particiapting in this race as my first ultra. But I delayed and delayed and delayed registering. And then I got tendonitis and had so many races and .....bascially I am a chicken shit. The idea of running around a one mile track for 24 hours was just too much for my tiny brain to handle. So instead when asked if I could help out I gave it some thought and figured I was due to volunteer. I have run a butt ton of races with a ton of volunteers who have helped me get to every finish line. It was time to repay the debt. Plus I was curious. 24 hour ultra runners are a different breed all together plus Buddy was running it so I wanted to cheer him on....

This past Friday afternoon one of my best running friend's Nicole (yes the Nicole who just ran her first marathon the weekend before) and I hit the road to Scottsboro Alabama so we could run the Scottsboro Half Marathon on Saturday. After 4.5 hours of mostly two lane roads through Albama (question: why are there no interstates in the south? Is this keeping with the slower pace of life or what?) we arrived at our awesome accomdations at America's Best Value Inn. Though the comforter was of questionable taste the room was not bad. There was a huge Bass fishing tournament that weekend so we were surrounded by boats and fisherman everywhere. We headed to Buena Vista Mexican Mexican restuarant to hydrate with margaritas. Then it was off to bed early. We woke up to rain. Which we knew was an option but had really refused to acknowledge. We decided to do race day packet pick-up since the night before packet pick-up was in Huntsville almost 50 miles away. Due to some misleading ...