Slightly belated race report here! Excuse my tardiness: As if my summer wasn't crazy enough trying to train for a mountain marathon while caring for an infant, I decided to switch jobs a week after the race. It certainly hasn't been boring!

I did a couple of easy runs in the week leading up to the marathon -- a jog through Palmer Park with the Attack Pack on Tuesday and a Monument Valley shuffle on Thursday, then took it easy on Friday and Saturday. As I wrote before, my nerves kicked…

My nerves are getting to me today. The Pikes Peak Marathon looms large, and although it's something I've done before, it's a rather big something to be doing on a summer Sunday. 

My son is 11 months old today. I knew in March that signing up for this marathon was a big reach, especially as I recovered from a c-section. But I used it as fuel. It was my motivator through…

So in the interest of not dying during the Pikes Peak Marathon coming up in less than two weeks (um, yikes), I decided to put my minimal summer training to the test the past two weekends in a race setting. 

The original plan was to spend July 29-30 at Barr Camp with my husband and the baby. We'd backpack up Saturday morning, spend the night in our tent, I'd wake up at some ungodly hour on Sunday to summit, and then we'd pack everything up and head down. Sounded like a grand adventure,…

So by now I've learned that keeping up with the blogging is much harder this year than it was last time. Sorry, Tim! 

Anyway, less than a month to go before we all toe the line to take on The Mountain. (Hoping our trials against it are more successful than those against the Game of Thrones character by the same name.) Since I last checked in, I've raced twice: the Summer Roundup Trail Run, aka the second leg of the Triple Crown, and the Barr Trail Mountain Race, aka the scrappy little…

No time like the present (and a long holiday weekend) to really get serious about this little jog up and down a mountain, right? 

Carrie and I formed an ambitious plan to double up longer efforts this weekend with a Rampart Reservoir loop on Sunday and a high-altitude marmot scramble on Monday. She rounded out the weekend with a long bike ride on Saturday, and…

At the 2017 Super Half-Marathon

The Garden of the Gods 10-Mile Run has come and gone. Last time I ran it felt like another lifetime ago, AND it was a different course, but it was still hard not to compare my…

Dusting off the ol' blog to announce that I am once again an active member of Purple and Gold Nation, the Mighty Marmots, the Triple Crown Runners! It's an honor to serve as your retread for the 2017 season.

Where we last left our hero (2012), I was 28 and had a boyfriend and lived in an apartment. Since…

I figured I would dust off the ol' blog to write a little about my first ultramarathon. I ran the Moab Red Hot 55k in Utah on February 14, 2015. 

I know I've written about them before, but I would be half the runner I am today without the help of the Attack Pack Running Group. They are always game for a…

Me (3), Carly Keller (2), and Kelly Ping (1) took home the goods for F25-29. With the awards ceremony a few months after the races, we runners had a chance to actually look presentable for the photos.

My legs have healed. The Triple Crown of Running is mostly a memory. I checked the…

Above: Victory soak in Fountain Creek. Photo by Christian Murdock. Below: Don and me, the only Pikes Peak Sports.us Triple Crown Runners who signed up for the marathon! Photo by Phoebe Blessing.

We've come full circle. I started blogging…

I will write about this in more detail soon enough, but for now ... HOLY CRAP I DID IT!

The Attack Pack and friends ready to take on the Falcon Trail in the dark.

Whenever I sign up for new race distances or athletic endeavors, I always envision feeling far more "ready" when race day/week/month actually arrives. The time between signing up and executing stretches on forever, week upon week of mythical training runs cascading into the future,…

Me and LB on our way up Mount Bierstadt, July 22

During every training cycle, especially for a new distance, I hit the skids mentally. I'm considering the PPM a new distance, even though I've run…

Upward! Upper Barr Trail, July 15

It has been an eventful few weeks. I've got to get back in the rhythm of writing here; since the fire, the words don't flow like they used to. It put things in perspective. Nature doesn't care about human life. (Actually, anyone who has hiked the upper reaches of Barr Trail knows that nature doesn't care about…

This is where I was when the Waldo Canyon fire started. Eight miles of hiking and a four-hour drive away from home. Miles and miles away from cell phone signal. Utterly alone except for the one person I hiked in with. LB and I both had hectic weeks, so it was nice to get out in the woods and breathe.

When we turned on our phones on Monday after reluctantly driving the…

Me, Sharon, Sharon's dad, Don, Don's doughnut, and Bill at 14,115 feet on Father's Day.

I feel good about my training from the past weekend. On Saturday, a few Attack Packers and I ran from Soda Springs Park, up the Incline, past No Name Creek a little ways into the Experimental Forest, then back down Barr Trail. It took us right around two hours to do the…

This is the only shot any of the photographers (in this case, Tim) managed to catch of me during the Garden of the Gods 10-Mile Race, as far as I can tell. As you can see, I appear to be having a one-woman party about half a mile into the race while everyone else is focusing on the task at hand.…

Here are a few photos of the miscreants I spend my Tuesday, Thursday, and occasional Saturday mornings with,…

Oh yeah. Cross training. I feel like I used to be better at it. But when I was training for my last "regular" marathon (the Tobacco Road Marathon in Raleigh, NC, on March 18), I settled into a groove: four runs a week, three yoga classes a week, rest day (or maybe two). I used to lift weights or swim laps or go to…

This is me on my first trip to Barr camp for the season this past Sunday. (Please excuse the overexposure. With my pack loaded up with avocados for Neil and Teresa, the caretakers of the camp, I had no room for a camera besides my cell phone.) I went with Josh, Ramsey, and Brian, three…