Last weekend, I ran the Ultimate Direction Dirty 30, a 50k race in Colorado. Read about it here. As promised, this post is all about those pesky logistics of ultrarunning: what to carry, what to pack in a drop bag, what to eat at aid stations. These are things I’d never given much thought to during a road marathon, and they seriously stressed me a little bit for the ultra. I think I did a pretty good job packing and eating, so here we go…
This past weekend I completed my first ultramarathon and and am no longer a trail runner wannabe! This was the first time in a very long time that I’ve gone into a race with serious questions about whether I would even finish, but *spoiler alert* I made it! I will separately write a post about what I wore, carried, ate, drank, packed, etc. for this ultramarathon in the mountains, but here are the normal post-race deets…
Race: Ultimate Direction Golden Gate Dirty Thirty
Location: Golden Gate Canyon State Park, Golden, CO. Approximately 45 minutes from Boulder or Denver. The race occurs between 7,500 to 9,500 feet above sea level.
What: TCTC Bayshore Marathon 2017
When: Saturday of Memorial Day weekend
Where: Traverse City, Michigan — Cherry Capital and Caribbean of the Midwest. If you make a mitt with your left hand, this race is at the inside top of your pinky.
Weather: Sunny, 60-70 degrees. Felt pretty warm in the final miles of the race. Luckily most of the race is at least partially shaded, so no sunburn for me.
Race: Big Sur International Marathon, a race that some regard as the most beautiful marathon in the United States
Location: Point-to-point course from Big Sur, California to Carmel-By-The-Sea, California; approximately 2 hrs south of San Francisco
Time of Year: 6:45 am on a Sunday at the end of April, when the flowers are in bloom
Here is a second installment of my series on meal kits. Check out my first post here, where I reviewed organic, vegan meals from Green Chef. This week, I tested out three meals with classic meal kit service Blue Apron. How did it stack up?
We have all been told that — contrary to conventional wisdom — it is really hard to lose weight while training for a marathon. In fact, a lot of people gain weight when they up their training mileage. Personally, after 21 marathon training cycles, I know these struggles all too well. (There may be people out there who start running and watch the pounds melt off; I am not one of them.) But I also think it is pretty unhelpful to say “It can’t be done,” and as I recently learned while completing a cut on the RP diet and simultaneously training for a BQ-pace marathon, it can be done.
Things have been… unstructured… since the end of my Renaissance Periodization cut and my BQ race at the Phoenix Marathon. I’ve written about my efforts to get back on track, not with the strict diet/training regime I had before, but something with a little direction. Basically, I need to do a better job of having food on hand so that I didn’t eat cereal and ice cream for every meal (true story). And a few new recipes after 12 weeks of the same tofu doesn’t sound like a bad idea. So I decided to try out some meal kit programs. I’m sampling Green Chef, Blue Apron, and Hello Fresh, at least to start. I’ll provide a review on each as I wrap up a week of meals. First up: Green Chef…
Better late than never on this one! My husband and I were fortunate to be invited to a wedding in St. Moritz, Switzerland in mid-January this year. I honestly had never heard of St. Moritz, but as soon as I Wikipedia’d it, I was pretty pumped, even if I mis-pronounced it for several weeks until someone correct me (Mor-RITZ, not MORE-itz). We also decided to extend the trip with stops in Florence and Rome, Italy. Here are some of the highlights.
I feel like I could write about 234,908 posts about all of the things I learned, tried, tweaked, etc. during my journey to BQ. So I’ll just do that until you or I get bored, whichever comes first… So far I’ve covered nutrition and pacing and my race tunes. Today’s topic is Orangetheory.
Hi all. Here is a quick check-in on my recovery after 
athlettuce 