In April 2017, I moved towns and into an apartment with my boyfriend and his really great 6 old boy who he had 50:50 custody of.  We had been doing a long distance relationship for 9 months and neither of us wanted to be long distance from day one.  He couldn’t leave where he lived and I had happy lived in that vicinity before and thought of it as my second home so I thought the move would be easy enough.  The town we lived in was new to me though, and the one thing I remember about when I first moved there, was that “the vicinity” was different than I had remembered it even though I had lived there many times in the past.

With this move came a huge adjustment period that I was and wasn’t expecting beyond the geography.  At 37, I was feeling that it was time to start settling down and so this new life provided for that.  I had babysat for all of my adolescent years and then some so I knew how demanding taking care of children is.  And though I had never been a parent, I knew enough to know all the added responsibilities, little and big, that it entails.  I expected change but I didn’t expect as big of a change as I got.  Mostly I was trying to fit my 24/7 lifestyle into a Monday-Friday 9am-5pm lifestyle with weekends off.  I was just not used to being done with all of the things I needed to do by 5pm in order to eat by 6 and have family time plus a whole weekend with the family too.

My boyfriend was not a runner, he was a climber. I loved his dedication to it and how he balanced it with fatherhood and our shared time religiously climbing and the relaxation of having the weekends off.  But I struggled so much with getting enough proper running in during the weekdays to make up for the weekends off.  I wanted both of these lifestyles, but couldn’t make it work.

In addition 2017 was the last year of my dads 5 year long cancer.  We knew he wouldn’t make it into the next year. It ended up being nearly all running season long that he stayed with us, fading slowly.

Lastly, this was also the year that I had overdone it with race goals having come off a very strong 2016 season.

2017 was the worst season I had ever had.  I had won a big race or two and held my own in plenty more but mostly I just couldn’t keep up with my life.

So when 2018 rolled around, I went for a minimal season, “active rest”. I signed up for 4 Golden Trail Series races and my goal was simply and realistically to make Top 10.  In addition was the Broken Arrow Skyrace , an excuse for my first trip to the Sierra Mountains of CA, and goodness I would like to forget it, the TDS of the UTMB….the longest, most brutal “active rest” session of the year.

Zegama-Aizkorri Marathon, May 2018

And here my season started……….horribly. All there is to it was an old weird idiosyncrasy that decided to flare back up making running impossible just 15k into the race.  My body seems to always experience the wrath at this race.

Broken Arrow 52k, June 2018

A week in the Sierras before the race was what the doctor ordered and the Broken Arrow’s surprising amount of single-track for being on a ski area had my spirits up.  Two loops later, I had finished the line first for the ladies and no sooner had to hop a plane back home for Father’s Day with boyfriend and his son.

Mont Blanc Marathon, June 2018

After a few flights and 6 days after the Broken Arrow Race I was back in Europe at the starting line of the Mont Blanc Marathon. This time it was the story of a hamstring cramp that hindered performance for the second half of the race.  I shortened my stride and finished 5th.

This, second race of the series, proving to be another tough go. I began to think it was the travel.  I admit I am getting older (38yrs) and the body just is not as resilient as it used to be.  A trip to Europe is a lot of being stuck in the seated position which wreaks havoc on the hip flexors in addition to the struggle in arriving somewhat hydrated.

Sierre-Zinal, August 2018

Although this race is the utmost of pleasures, I had to throw this race in last minute as I didn’t finish the Zegama race and I needed it to complete the Golden Trail Series.   This race was not in my original schedule as the Pikes Peak Mararthon was the next weekend and it is a lot of travel in between destinations.

In order to be as rested as I could be for Pikes Peak, I made Sierra-Zinal a whirlwind trip arriving with just one day to spare and returning home right after the race.

I finished the line 6th which felt fine for this last minute race that always draws out some specialists rarely seen in the bigger yet financially smaller MUT circuits.

Pikes Peak Marathon, August 2018

     So yes, this was the year I broke the record, yet I think it can still go down hard!  I felt good that day but I don’t feel like I had to work at it as much as a solid record demands.

…… and then there was the TDS, August 2018

     TDS, stands for something, and if I had put any true intention into realistically doing well at this race I probably would have looked up what it stood for.  All I know was that, once again, I was under trained for an ultra.  In this case it was a long ultra, longer than I had ever run before.  I had already raced the last two weekends (two out of three maybe?) and this was a second trip to Europe as well. All of this really eats into solid consistent ultra distance training within the crucial 6 week pre-race time period.

I was going to do a practice race at a shorter longer ultra :), a 100k earlier in the season but my sub-ultra race schedule was the priority and when that race came closer it was obvious that it wasn’t a good idea for the longevity of my season.

I felt the same about this race, but the points to get into the race had been gathered and flights had been booked, it was simply too late to bail and I guess you never know, compared to an average person I couldn’t say I wasn’t in shape.  But an average person probably had this as their goal all year.

I wasn’t prepared mentally or physically and I was already having a questionable physical year.

Yes, it was my body that gave out first, i couldn’t run downhill (the Zegama sacrum thing) then I couldn’t run uphill either and I still had so far to go.

I was done, totally done, walking into the last crewing station begging to stop. I was content that I had run a longer distance than ever before and “please take me home”.

But nope, some how I left that last aid station very reluctantly and hated life for 30 more kilometers plus some ridiculous amount of vertical to go with it.

All I can hope for with that experience is that it is good to have a bad first experience so that the future ones can only get better?

Otter Trail, October 2018

   My season was done.  I knew from how the year had started and how it had progressed that there was no way I was going to physically be able to run this after the really long trip of sitting in airplanes to South Africa in this particular year. But it was the gorgeous Otter Trail race, an opportunity that is hard to come by. Even to a local it is a coveted entry as it is held in a National Park with, rightly so, strict number limits and a high price for entry.

     I did start the race, but after 10k the sacrum issue had flared up and I was done. I enjoyed what I could of the course that day and I bailed after experiencing the river crossing.

     I had wrapped up my 2018 season.