Stay Strong - Run Long

My fascination with the Equalizer Endurance Run is no secret. I LOVE THIS RACE!!!! The race director has become a great friend of mine over the past few years and is just an amazing person...no...my blog has not been taken over by Chris Zepp :)....This year was no different. I had a confidence in me that I've never had going into a race. Not necessarily confidence in my training, as that was chaos as you'll soon find out. My confidence came from knowing that the goal of 100 miles that has evaded me at the last 2 attempts at this race was entirely possible. Training leading up to the race was pretty...well...blah. Having moved into a new home a little more than 3 months ago, a lot of the lead up to the race was spent doing stuff around the house when I should/could have been training. The one positive about the location of our new home though is that even if I don't have my beloved "Gravel Grinder" to train on, I have a paved bike path that's roughly 1/4 of a

Growing up I was never good in sports. I went out, but was never good. My dad was interested in motor sports and we spend a lot of time involved in that. School sports weren't all that important in my childhood or teenage years. My parents always encouraged me to go out and I thank them for that. Athletics taught me a lot about myself and about teamwork. Sports were good for me, but they really weren't that important. When I became a parent, I decided very early on that I was not going to push my kids into any sport. This was the way in which I was raised. I am not going to be a parent who put more emphasis on sports than allowing a kid to be a kid. In a culture that is so focused on making your kid stand out as a star athlete in the hopes that they'll get a sports scholarship this may seem strange, but that's not how I want my kids to be raised. If my kids want to try something, ABSOLUTELY you can try it, but if you are going to do it, you are going to work hard at i

Yep, this is the song that was in my head for almost 99% of the race The Booneville Backroads 100 is something that I've wanted to do ever since hearing about it being Iowa's very first 100 mile race. It intrigued me as according to the website it's "85% gravel, 10% level B roads, 5% pavement". It intrigued me as the start line was 8 miles from my house. And it intrigued me because the start of the race was on my 35th birthday. With all of the stars aligned, I would kick myself later for not signing up. Having just run a 100 miler in January, I felt really good about my training in February. I was still keeping my mileage up, but didn't want to burn myself out so didn't push the mileage up too much but worked more on intensity. Since I knew the area that this race would take place I really wanted to focus a lot of my attention on actually running on gravel and cranking out as many hill sessions as I could. If you follow me on twitter or Facebook, y