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We had run these trails a few times in our preparation for the race, and those runs were quite tough for me… I generally just had very heavy legs and thought the trails were way too technical to find a groove. But I went into the race with no expectations for how the trails would […]

Left foot. Right foot. Left foot. Right foot. Left foot. Right foot. Left foot. Right foot. Wow, two races in a row that have inspired Tim Tollefsen vernacular to run through my brain. We raced the Loon Mountain Vertical Kilometer (VK) this past weekend. A VK race is usually straight up a mountain with an

Whew! What a finish to a whirlwind of a month in which I traveled every weekend and somehow also did Farmers Markets every Tuesday. I’m so privileged and grateful and amazed I get to do these random things. SO many people were involved in making this happen. When you get to these long or multifaceted

The trails in Marin were the first trails I’d ever ran on. The Marin Ultra Challenge (MUC) 50 miler was the first trail race I did. It sounds silly and exaggerating, but this MUC 50k race felt like a homecoming, in a hilly trail-running way, at the same time intimidating and comforting. My training in the few

Volunteers at trail races are usually awesome, but I have to say that the TARC (Trail Animals Running Club) volunteers are really a step up. This was my first race with them, and I am so happy I found this small trail running community on the east coast! The nothing-fancy, local, volunteer-based nature of this

An “aquabike” is a triathlon without the run. I was signed up for the Pilgrimman Half Triathlon. But when my shin started flaring up 10 days out from the race (right as I was beginning to taper… ugh), I realized I should seriously consider dropping the run. So aquabike it was! The distances were the

Accompanying video on my YouTube channel: Core Essentials. Core is essential to both activate (before training) and strengthen (separately). A strong and active core helps with injury prevention and efficiency of movement. The core core exercises:

This isn’t really a race report because I didn’t end up racing. But I think DNS (did not start) events deserve as much reflection as completed (and DNF (did not finish)) races do. The Healdsburg Running Company put on a phenomenal race. I was so impressed by their trail work, given the muddy, drowning mess the trails

I couldn’t find a table that had it all, so I made one myself. This is a synthesis of the training zone information I’ve gathered over the past few years of coaching myself for these endurance events. There is a lot of nuance not shown in the table. In college, I always wondered why we did

It’s the morning after the inaugural Mammoth Trail Fest 50k (~33 miles with ~6,600 feet of elevation gain), and the sun has just risen above the eastern mountaintops outside our bedroom window, casting the morning glow only well-known to some on the western mountains opposite it. Mammoth Lakes, where this trail race takes place, is a tourism