The Runner's Trip: Run Long, Travel Far, Discover More
trail running and travel blog by Sarah Lavender Smith
I decided to turn my sour grapes into fortified grape juice and attempt an upstart, scrappy race the weekend after Hardrock 100, on the same mountain range, that’s arguably even more difficult—a race so miserable in its first year on the current route that the RD admits, “I don’t think it was a good experience […]
“For these three days,” I told the group gathered for our inaugural San Juan Mountain Running Camp, “I want you to encounter and experience challenges on the trail that you don’t expect, and that perhaps intimidate you, because you’ll discover that you can get through and handle more than you think you can. And you’ll […]
This is has become my life, my domestic ultra. If someone asks what I do, I probably should embrace the old-fashioned term “homemaker,” because that’s my main purpose now: building and making a home, and in the process, circling back to the summertimes I savored as a kid.
To me, an ideal getaway is not an island resort or a spa weekend. It’s a running camp in a mountain environment. These totally worthwhile experiences at trail-running camps heighten my excitement to launch a new mountain-running camp just one month from now.
Six tips for recovering from a running injury and being less stubborn or shortsighted than I was during the past month.
I’m writing this partly as a reminder never to take exultant, elevated, healthy highs for granted, because you just may fall on your ass.
A camp, a house, a horse, a race and some kids. These are big pieces fitting into the puzzle of my life this year.
When I feel overwhelmed, or try to help my kids deal with their stress, I draw on lessons learned and strategies developed through ultras.
I need to sort out thoughts about the coming year and beyond, and that’s another reason I’m looking forward to this 24-hour hamster-wheel ultra on new year’s eve—it’ll be a retreat of sorts.
Like the “super moon,” the course seemed unusually brilliant and exaggerated in its beauty. Little did I know on that blissful, escapist day that disaster would strike 36 hours later.