Girls Gone Wildwood

Cedar on the way to the top of Hamilton Mountain  Me: I wish I could retire early. John (husband): You would be so bored. Me: No, I wouldn't. John: What would you do all day? Me: I would run all day with Cedar and become a dirtbag.  John: <rolls his eyes>  Dog water break This was a conversation we had my first week off during the holidays. I had not planned on taking 2 weeks off during the holidays, but I was on the verge of burnout at work and I knew for me and the team, I should probably take a few weeks off. Taking a few weeks off of work isn't foreign to me, I do it a few times a year and travel some amazing places. But taking a few weeks off and not having anything planned is not something I typically do.  The Gorge The holidays filled in a few of the blanks and I was hoping to do some snowboarding and snowshoeing during the days I wasn't running with Susan. That plan worked out perfectly the first week, but the second week i...

RIP Nick Fish Since I started working from home Forest Park has literally become my gym, which means I do a lot of routes that are 5-8 miles. Since I live close to the Birch trailhead a lot of my routes weave between Birch, Alder and Firelane 1 and I tend to make them up as I go. But every once in awhile I want something different, so I thought I would start posting some shorter routes to our blog in 2020.  Cedar and I needed 8 miles on Sunday to complete our (my) goal of 50 miles for the week, so I decided to create a new route at the other end of the park. It was a very muddy and sloppy route, but it was nice to change it up a bit.      Muddy Firelane 7 Route: Springville / FL 7 - WW: 1.01 WW - Hardesty: 2.25 Hardesty - Leif: .27 Leif - Cannon: 2.21 Cannon - WW: .32 WW - Springville: 2.17 Springville - car: .32 Total: 8.57

Baby how you feelin'? Feeling good as hell Woo girl, need to kick off your shoes Got to take a deep breath, time to focus on you  Lyrics from Lizzo - Good as Hell  after our 30 mile Wildwood end to end - feeling good as hell The end of the year recap is my favorite blog post to write of the year, it is always fun to go back and reflect on what we accomplished, learned from and pushed through throughout the year. Normally there is single event or thing that stands out for the year, yes we finished a 100k this year, but I wouldn't say that was it. Honestly, I think it was just feeling good and enjoying our time being together on the trails. Life in general this year has been pretty good, which helps my stress level on the trails (no DNFs), having a coach ( Yassine Diboun ) didn't hurt either.  We have been trail / ultra running for almost 10 years and we have worked a lot of the kinks out. We still struggle and bonk, but we are better equ...