Every week, I look forward to my long run on trails. Rain or shine, hot or cold, solo or in a group, the trails are a place of joy and adventure. There are so many reasons to love the trails — more reasons than I can possibly list! — but here are nine benefits of trail running to get you started!
Fastest Known Times (FKTs) have exploded in popularity in recent years. But what is an FKT? Who can submit one? Who are the people out there setting FKTs, and what more can we do to help support those people or what can we do to attempt one ourselves?
These are races that have come up in trail groups and conversations year after year, plus a few others that I’ve found via searching for local beginner-friendly trail options. This list is focused on the greater NC area (basically anything within a few hours’ drive from central NC), mostly trails, with options from 5K up through 100 milers, plus the World Majors and a few tried and true popular road races.
I was injured for the 2021 Richmond Marathon, so I went up with a couple friends to spectate, cheer, and take some pictures of so many of our friends and teammates racing that day in the half and full marathon! I noted a few highlights of the day, and I included a link to the full gallery where print and web resolution images are available for free download!
I’ve been having a surge of creativity these past few weeks with drawing and photography, so I’m going to keep this post just super quick with a couple still life photos I worked on recently and wanted to share. Also, I’ve been slowly submitting photos for stock use on Adobe and am building up a portfolio, so that’s exciting news! I may be posting sometime later with a model call if anyone wants to be stock photo famous 😂 Enjoy!
What it’s like to recover after completing a 100 mile race? To be honest, it’s still an on-going lesson. There’s been a lot of rest. There’s been a lot of food. There’s been a lot of walking. There’s been some rock climbing and mountain biking and a few attempts for some veeerrrryyyyy easy runs. And there’s been plenty of time for me to go slightly stir crazy and dabble in some neglected hobbies (see Exhibit A: a blog post for no particular reason!) 😆
100 miles. I’m not really sure what exactly compels a person to decide to run that far. I had originally planned and trained to run Umstead 100 in spring 2020 as my first 100 miler but, well, spring 2020 happened. In that aftermath I felt burned out from running, but once January 2021 rolled around that old restless itch reappeared and asked, “what if…” So I signed up for the Yeti 100 Mile Endurance Run lottery, thinking there was no way I’d actually get in. (Surprise!!)
It’s been a hot minute since I blogged consistently and shared some Fri-yay Fast Favorites, and there’s a lot of exciting news that I’ve been sharing on social media, but I never did share it in one coherent space! So here’s a super quick summary and round-up of some of the things going on in my life and some of my current favorites that I wanted to share with you.
