Yosemite Valley, with El Capitan on the right, taken from the Four Mile Trail to Glacier Point.

Five full days with the kids at sleep-away camp. What were Morgan and I to do with ourselves? Run!

We settled on Yosemite because of its proximity, and because of the diversity and drama of its environment. We also decided we wanted to stay in one place and take day trips, rather than carrying our gear from point to point and camping, so that we could run without being weighed down and recover with a hot shower and cold beer at day’s end.

Yosemite National Park is so vast — 1,169 square miles — that the options for running and hiking seem as limitless as the view from the top of Glacier Point. Planning where to go in a limited number of days inevitably makes for tough trade-offs. We consulted lots of helpful resources, such as iRunFar’s Yosemite Guide and the park service website.

We wanted to go everywhere, from Tuolomne Meadows to Wawona, but given our training level and the park’s jagged elevation profile, we knew we should limit ourselves to “only” 15 – 20 miles per day. We also didn’t want to spend an hour or more driving or riding a shuttle bus on windy roads to trail heads. We therefore decided to stay in Yosemite Valley at Curry Village and focus on the valley’s renowned trails and summits (Half Dome, El Capitan and Glacier Point), saving destinations like Lyell Canyon, Clouds Rest and Buena Vista Peak for another trip.

(Note: for a review of Curry Village lodging and tips on what to bring, please see our travel blog post.) (more…)

This post is only a recap of the last two weeks’ training, which is part of chronicling an 18-week training cycle. Sorry, there’s nothing worth reading here — it’s just a rundown of nerdy, obsessive details that only a runner would care about — but stay tuned: I am working on a longer post about last week’s trip to Yosemite, which will have practical advice about where to run in that glorious national park. (more…)

Coming through the first aid station at the Skyline 50K, I was all smiles because Morgan (who took these photos) and Kyle were there.

Three weekends, three trail races — a marathon, 30K and then 50K. I’ve never entered so many events with such high cumulative mileage in such a short time.

First it was the hilly Headlands “Marathon” (more like 27+ miles due to a long course and me veering off course; finished 2nd female in 4:35. See last week’s post). Then two weeks ago, it was the Sequoia 30K (1st female, 5th overall in 2:54). And finally, yesterday’s Skyline 50K (2nd female, 19th overall in 4:46).

I used to enter races with careful consideration and focus my training on them. Now, I’m doing the opposite and exploring the benefits of racing to train; that is, of having fast-paced but not very goal-oriented long runs (the races) part of a longer training plan. (more…)

Training to run an ultra sometimes feels as shaky as my commitment to do more gardening and eat less meat. I want to be able to run double or more the distance I do now, just as I want to replant our flower box and eat lower on the food chain, but then I wonder if I like the idea of doing those things more than actually doing them.

On Thursday, I emailed some friends to find out about their weekend long-run plans, hoping to tag along and recharge in the company of others since my motivation to do a long run was wavering. I knew I needed a friend or an inspiring course to help me go the distance and remind me why the weekend long run is so crucial to training and ultimately so satisfying. Thankfully, I got both and unexpectedly found myself on the cliff-hugging Miwok and Coastal trails in Marin. (more…)

Seeing Stinson from the Dipsea on our anniversary trail run.

My husband and I celebrated our 20-year wedding anniversary with our idea of a dream date: We ditched our two kids with relatives and ran the Dipsea Trail from Mill Valley to Stinson Beach and back. Along the 14 miles of rutted trail and steep stairways that climb out of redwoods to reveal the San Francisco Bay, I wondered how I’ve been married and running for so long when I generally struggle with commitment and battle boredom. I drop in and out of the workforce and start way more books than I ever finish. Half-baked projects litter my desk, and unaccountable gaps wreck my resume.

And yet here I am with Morgan, the high school boyfriend I married at 21, and here I am training for a 50-mile trail race after 15 years of running and finishing some 30 marathons. I can tell myself, I must not be a total flake or failure, because I have a good marriage and I’m a good runner.

Surely there’s a connection between my marriage and running, but what is it? (more…)

(Please read the Week 1 post if you’re wondering what this post is all about.)

I intended to post a weekly training recap on Sunday or Monday of each week, and already I’m behind. Blame it on the transition back to home and moving back into our house. Routines get put on hold when dozens of boxes await unpacking, furniture needs moving, Internet and phone don’t function and the house doesn’t feel at all like a home (yet). Here, belatedly, is the journal of the previous week. (more…)

In four months, on October 9, I’m going to become an ultrarunner when I attempt to run 50 miles.

Me on my 41st birthday last month, running a 40K through mountains above Tuscany.

There, I said it! I wasn’t going to. I wasn’t going to graduate to that distance, and I wasn’t going to turn this blog into a personal training log — the kind of painfully dull and obsessive narrative that chronicles miles run, blisters taped and gels digested. But now I’m doing it. Here’s why I’m going public with my plan and will track the progress here: (more…)

Running along the coastal trail in the Cinque Terre region of Italy.

A year ago, I wrote about running through my hometown on my 40th birthday. Now, having recently celebrated my 41st birthday by running, hiking and eating my way through a 40K in the mountains of Tuscany, I’m reflecting on how running affected our round-the-world travel and how travel influenced my running.

So much changed in one year: We left our home, Morgan left his job and our family experienced an entirely different lifestyle as we traveled the globe. Our trip is drawing to an end, with just a few weeks until we’re back in California. There are so many things about this past year I will miss, but running in far-flung destinations is near the top of the list (behind family togetherness and a simpler, less scheduled lifestyle). Week after week, in whatever place we found ourselves, running was a friend and travel guide, providing familiarity and pointing me in new places to explore. (more…)

I rolled out of bed and signed up for my first-ever triathlon while wearing these clothes that I had slept in, moments before the event began.

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 called Daylesford, to compete in a trail race.

We arrived at the Jubilee Lake Holiday Park and settled into a tiny rental cabin that was like a mobile home mounted on blocks. The park, on the edge of a state forest, was the site of a “Dirt Fest” February 20 – 21 put on by an outfit called In 2 Adventure.

The trail race was only a 10K, but it was a good enough excuse for us to go there — that, plus the fact the event promised a kids’ run and other family fun, all in a big recreational area where kids could run wild while us grown-ups sat around campervans and knocked back cold ones. (Our travel budget is all about cheap thrills these days.) (more…)

I was all smiles before the start of the Croesus Crossing because I was clueless about the terrain we faced.

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 course and the abnormal adroitness of the other runners. We feel a bit like anthropologists who spied a new breed of trail runner here in the jungle-like bush of the South Island.

Long story short: We got our butts kicked. We were unprepared for the difficulty and humbled by the hard-core agility of the others.

“Did you enjoy it?” someone asked me. No, I can’t say I did. But it was a learning experience.

(Hitting your head with a hammer also could be called a learning experience: Don’t do it again.)

Recently, here and on our Away Together travel blog, I’ve been raving about New Zealand trail running. There are beautiful, well-maintained trails (called “tracks”) crisscrossing the country’s national parks. We thought the Croesus Crossing would be like the other tracks we’ve run here, with mostly level footing and well marked. We were wrong. (more…)