Category: Motivation - RunBrinksyRun

Dances With Dirt: Gnaw Bone

6/2/2015

A few months back, my running Thunder Buddy, Amy, had convinced me to do what's called "The Triple Crown Challenge." Essentially, you run two half marathons in Kentucky and a third half marathon of your choice and BOOM! Bonus medal. It didn't seem like a big deal at the time, but as the deadline to pick that third half got closer and closer, I was struggling to decide what my mysterious third half would be.

A friend on facebook posted about her planned trip up to Nashville, Indiana to run the Dances With Dirt 50k and once I realized they had a half, I was in. And, I managed to convince fellow trail runner and coworker Lauren along for the ride! Plus, the promotional video made it seem so enticing...

The Barkleys MArathonS

4/22/2015

This past Sunday I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to attend a screening of a new documentary movie that featured the infamous Barkley Marathons. It was a packed house, a sold-out crowd of runners and adventure enthusiasts, in addition to your normal film festival goers. I had heard about The Barkley Marathons before, as it's a pretty well known race here in Tennessee, and apparently world-wide, but this movie made it in to so much more.

SPEED IS THE DEVIL.

3/27/2015

I've told the story before on this blog about my many failed attempts to follow a training plan. I've rationalized it as a stubborn streak, a need for independence, or that following a set plan would ruin my very basic love of running for the sake of running.

Well, I finally figured out how to get me to follow a training plan:

Make someone I run with follow one.

And this is the story of how my friend Jen tricked me in to doing speed work.

A Look Back on 2014

1/5/2015

As I prepare to tackle 2015 head on, I thought I should take a look back at where I was one year ago.

What goals had I set for myself back last January?
Had I accomplished all of my goals?
Were there any worth repeating?

So let's do a side by side comparison...

I have a feeling this is gonna hurt my pride a bit.

New Year, New Me...

12/31/2014

So you've probably seen this meme floating around on the internet the past few days...

I will admit that I love a good meme and so I chuckled the first time I saw it. And then I saw it again... And again... And then a few more times.

And now it's my turn to call bullshit.

Because since when have we decided that ridiculing people for trying to better themselves is a good idea?

WEEKLY RECAP!

11/17/2014

So how did I do during my second week of training for my 25K?

Well, not as many runs as my first week. But perhaps more QUALITY than quantity...

That's good right?

HILL, YEAH!

11/12/2014

I started running back when I was still living in Michigan. I love it and I'm thankful every day for having lived in a place where I could step out my door and go running for however many miles I felt like. Living in Michigan, out in the country, where all the streets are laid out in mile and half mile increments, it was always easy to set milestones on my runs, to know how far I had gone, and how far I had left to go before finally arriving back at my doorstep.

I had access to beautiful trails, covered in pine needles. Quiet, restful places that ran alongside creeks, with gentle slopes and trails that turned and curved through beautiful forests.

I'm glad that that's where I got my start as a runner, because I'll tell you what, if I had started running after I'd moved to Tennessee? Well, that may have changed my entire disposition. We can call them "hills" or we can call them mountains, but I've run both here in Tennessee and have learned to love this gorgeous hilly country.

And I've learned that they can make me a stronger, faster runner.

ONE WEEK IN!

11/10/2014

Ta-Da!

One week in to my training and I have, more or less, kept to my training plan!

Ok, so maybe I've been "less" using the training plan rather than more. Unless you count that my training plan said to run six out of seven days a week. Because I did that.

But otherwise? Ehh... Not so much.

TRAINING tIME!

11/3/2014

So, I mentioned in my post last week that my next big adventure is to start training for a 25k. I have two in mind; one a trail race called T he Black Warrior 25k and the other is the Fifth Third River Bank Run back in my hometown of Grand Rapids.

This will be my longest race to date, as a 25k is 15.5 miles, just a smidge longer than a half marathon. It's part of my short term planning in order to reach my goal of running a 50k. As much as I wanted to run a 50k this year, I just didn't put in the miles this summer for that to be a reasonable goal in the next few months. I spent so much of the first part of the year trying to recover from my hamstring injury and then playing it safe because of that that I just didn't do the work I needed to reach that goal.

But that's the great thing about goals. Sometimes it's necessary to take a step back and reevaluate them. You don't necessarily have to give up on them, just change your time table.

#RagnarTN - The ReCap!

10/29/2014

After a rather uneventful Thursday evening of coordinating with Van 1, getting the Michigan folk from Van 2 down safe and sound in to Nashville and one of the worst waiters in the history of Olive Garden, dawn finally started to break on Friday morning, and the incandescent glow of the orange Ragnar Start Line greeted us.

It was 7:00am on Friday morning, and I was headed out to begin my second attempt at #RagnarTN, after having injured myself during last year's attempt. Along with five Ragnar newbies, we were about to undertake an event that I have said before can be "life changing."