The Runner's Trip: Run Long, Travel Far, Discover More
trail running and travel blog by Sarah Lavender Smith
Could I successfully race for three days straight? Could the organizers pull off their idea for a trail-running “festival”? How the heck would they shuttle hundreds of runners for hours each day to trailheads on the edges of the national parks? Turns out, the transportation became a part of the adventure.
Whereas Stages 1 and 2 were like an appetizer and salad course, Stage 3 would be the Grand to Grand Ultra’s Supersized Full Meal Deal. It would dish up hot, hard roads; steep, rocky climbs; debilitating deep-sand tracks; gnarly, in-your-face vegetation; slippery slickrock, monotonous highway shoulders, and beautiful, baffling fine-sand dunes—relentless, towering, engulfing sand dunes.
Over these past four weeks, I kept asking myself how the heck could I find time and energy to train at a peak level and get ready to run across the back country between Arizona and Utah. Then my mind sharpened its focus on the task of getting every detail of food and gear figured […]