The Runner's Trip: Run Long, Travel Far, Discover More
trail running and travel blog by Sarah Lavender Smith
I’m writing about goals and grit rather than “new year’s resolutions” because that phrase seems so prone to failure. Goals take grit, which might be defined as perseverance combined with passion. Also, I want others to go public with their goals here. How about we make a virtual pact to go for it?
I like to think of running in terms of a trip, in all senses of the word: a journey, a mind-bending head trip, and a stumble that represents unexpected challenges and comebacks. Infected by wanderlust, I love to take all kinds of trips. I came up with “the runner’s trip” to capture those concepts and […]
When I don’t feel like going to the track, or I’m traveling and a track isn’t available, then I do this speed workout on the open trail or road.
Our running gear made our bags burst. Here’s how we kept our promise to pack only what we easily could carry, and still have the gear we needed to run on our trip.
Being a student and groupie of ultrarunning for several years could not prepare me for what I had to learn firsthand. I felt baptized into the sport when I said in my head, “Oh, so this is what it’s all about—this is what I signed up for. It’s supposed to hurt. It’s supposed to be […]
If you wanna combine a dazzling seaside destination with running, consider Brighton and one of these two races.
We muddled through the highly subjective, somewhat arbitrary, always tortuous, often fascinating, and just as often maddening process of planning a year-long travel itinerary. Along the way, we learned from mistakes and developed a few guiding principles to minimize the time spent planning while maximizing the chances we’ll wind up in fabulous yet affordable places.
I never imagined I would commit to my first triathlon moments before the event began, while I was still groggy from sleep and wearing my pajamas. But that’s what happened when Morgan, the kids and I recently found ourselves on the edge of a lake in a eucalyptus forest north of Melbourne, in a community […]
A Conversation 38,000 Feet Up With The Two-Time Kona Ironman World Champ I’m phobic about flying and didn’t want to be squeezed between strangers on the 14-hour flight from Sydney to LAX, so I chose a seat in the rear of the Qantas 747 where I’d have only one person at my side. Whose elbows […]
Two days have passed since Morgan and I finished the Croesus Crossing trail event on the West Coast of New Zealand, and we’re still looking at each other stupefied and using expressions like, “Can you believe …?” and “What was that?” I’m grateful that he was with me to corroborate the technical difficulty of the […]