What's Your Dream?

Remember how I tried to run Sun Mountain 50k with a stomach bug? Try pacing a marathon with a migraine. Here's a tip, don't try to do that.  I was asked several months back to pace the  Seattle Rock N Roll Marathon , which of course I am always happy to do. I love pacing! The race was on Sunday and Saturday morning I woke up with a bad headache which quickly escalated to a migraine. I had it all day long. I stayed in bed, locked up on my dark quiet apartment. I messaged my pace team to let them know I wasn't feeling well and that I was going to do my best the next day. I woke up Sunday feeling a bit better, I was able to move around at least. I got ready and headed to the midway exchange point for the race. Still feeling blah but willing to give the pacing my best shot we started out and I was ok for the first couple of miles then I realized was working 10x harder than I should have been, I let my pace partner know that I was starting to really work hard to run. I start...

Back when I first started running I remember reading a Facebook chain that said not to run if you have an upset stomach. I tested this advice on my own on slightly upset stomachs and determined that it was sound advice.  From Tuesday night through Saturday morning I was fighting some kind of stomach thing. Vomiting, diarrhea, the whole thing. Friday I started to feel better, no vomiting, just the other fun stuff and Saturday I work up with just an upset feeling stomach. Saturday was race day. Remember that sound, tried and true advice? I threw it out the window and tried to race anyway.  I shared a cabin with some run friend, thanks Carol for keeping me awake all night with your tossing and turning 😜, non of us slept well. I toss it up to pre-race jitters. Race morning I picked up my friend Mary and the way to the race start. We got there plenty early to take our time getting ready and lined up with the plan of running quite a bit of the race together.  As soon ...

I was feeling really low after my DNF at Sun Mountain . I didn't want to run at all. I was thinking of going to Echo Valley with my friend Mary and was basically set to hit "buy" when my other friend Liz pinged me.  That's how I ended up at the Beacon Rock 25k .  I didn't know what to expect from this race, I hadn't been practicing a lot of elevation gain and this race has almost 4,000 ft in the 25k. So I planned to just hike/run it. This race had a very generous time cutoff, so I wasn't really worried at all. I took my trekking poles with and used them on all of the uphills. I couldn't believe how great my legs felt after! I wasn't sore much at all, just my shoulders from the poles.  I was getting ready the morning of the race and found Emily and Sean hanging out under their nice dry tent. So I joined them for a while before the race, just hanging out and having a good time not knowing that Emily was about the same pace as me and that Sea...

Like a tornado she swept into my life, turning it sideways and filling it with adventure. I had no idea that in such a short time someone could influence me and my life so much. Her name is Anne Danczyk. I met her on her first day at Amazon. She had just joined my Executive Assistant team; we were at Key Arena for the Amazon Seattle All-Hands, even in a stadium of 30,000 people Anne still stood out. She is a powerhouse of confidence, capturing her audience, not just by her beauty but her passion. She stormed in a few minutes late, literally running from campus due to a slight misunderstanding in the meeting location. Instead of stressing about it, she just laughed and was really happy about making it before the start of the presentations. That just who Anne is, bubbly, silly and carefree.  Anne's life is that of fairy tales, to say that she is a go getter is an understatement of a lifetime. Anne's first job as a young girl was working with horses. She trained to be on the ...

I am sitting in the sun, watching the waves crash against the rocks below me. The people walking behind me with their headphones in, phones out, and cameras strapped to their sides. Not looking up at the beauty before them. It is like this now. People are disconnected from the beauty and magic around them. Lost in their own little electronic worlds. I myself am a cheat, thinking I am looking up and around, telling myself that I am taking it all in but I’m not really. I have my laptop open and it is sitting in my lap, I'm just pretending to be a true observer of the beauty around me. The water is warmer now, it is getting the summer hew about it, filling with sea plants, becoming less clear with every passing day. The music of the waves is louder now, with the passing boats now flooding to its water, causing more turbulence than in the winter months. I have lived her for five years now and I still catch my breath at the site and smell of the water. Coming from a land far far away...

I did something that I have always wanted to do, I packed up my car, and Laddie, and drove off into the sunset, so to speak. I only had a vague idea of where I wanted to go and no idea how long we would be gone. It was one of the most liberating things I have ever done. I was completely free, with no one or anything to hold me back. I knew that I wanted to see the Washington peninsula; I had never been there before. I had lived in Washington for five years and had never seen that side of the state. The side that promises mountains, the sea and cute little towns along its coast. I knew that I wanted to hit some of the more popular spots, so I started off with Port Orchard, I didn’t stay. It wasn’t what I expected, too commercial. Which makes sense as it is very close to Seattle. I went on to Bremerton, which was a huge surprise to me. I loved the port feel, the small downtown feel, the ferries coming and going. However, I was very saddened by Bremerton at the same time. It is a dyi...

  Are you preparing to make the leap to an ultramarathon? Throughout this interview series, top ultra bloggers have shared their personal experiences and advice to help you accomplish your first ultramarathon. They have covered the most difficult aspects of running an ultra , debunked the common myths and misconceptions , and are now sharing their real, personal accounts of their first ultra. When asked “what do you wish you had known before running your first ultra?”, they each learned unique lessons during that first ultra experience. What You Should Know Before Running Your First Ultra Once you’ve gone to your other runner friends and have searched extensively through Google, you may still be left with some questions and surprises on race day. To help you have a better idea of what to prepare for and expect, we asked these top bloggers what they wish they had known before running their first ultramarathon. Each had unique experiences that stemmed into lessons learned: ...