Badass Barbie? If I passed you on the trail at my last race you may have heard me singing this song out loud. I feel strong when I'm running the trails these days. And I totally feel empowered at the gym even while I'm in the darkest depths of my pain cave. Well, especially , when I'm in the darkest depths of my pain cave. As a woman I think its important to feel strong, empowered, and maybe a little badass. I look back on my life and wonder why I waited this long to embrace power and strength. Sad thing is, it was there the whole time and I just never really tapped into it like I have recently. Sometimes I wish I could have the last ten years of my life back to do it all over again. I've been perusing the blogosphere lately and noticing discussions pertaining to women in barefoot/minimalist running. I have to throw my two cents in. But be warned, my two cents has been in a sweaty gym shorts pocket for the duration of my last workover. Yeah. That's right.

Sunrise on the trail at Mile 5 Sometimes you just feel something in your gut and you know you have to do it. That's how I felt when I signed up for the Rock-N-River 50 Miler and Marathon. And even at the exact moment when I was registering I had serious doubts about a lot of things. Mostly whether my body could hang for the marathon portion (27.7) miles, but also about my nutrition, my training, my abilities and my limits. I had a lot of questions and a deep layer of doubt and hesitation. I messaged Seth, my coach, to explain my concerns. Here's an excerpt from his original reply... June 4, 2011 " As far as you doing it here is my answer. If you have doubt and don't think you can, then I don't think you can either. Now if you think you can, I am 100% confident you can...Ya its going to be hard, ya its going to hurt, but who cares. If you don't even sign up and try it you will never know and you will never have even given yourself the chance... For

Running out at the lake I have a knack for getting myself into trouble. Most of the time its totally unintentional and it seems it gets worse the older I get. In fact, as I get older my attitude about life in general has gotten pretty relaxed. I can honestly say that the older I get the more I don't give a rat's ass. Proof of this is my recent reprimand at my local gym. Yeah. I got in trouble for taking my tank top off. I was feeling hot and smothered. I had a modest bra on and I just didn't care about stripping one stupid layer off. I don't have much to "show off" so I had no idea it would cause an issue. Apparently there's a "dress code" in the gym AND they enforce it. Who knew? I have this completely unfounded and non-objective theory that as we get older we fall into one of two camps. We either get crochety, crabby and conservative or we get chill relaxed and medicinal. Maybe, in both cases, life jades us a little. In the first camp we

Do you think instead of a book about ultra runners who drink, Christopher McDougall's next book might be about ultra drinkers who run? Yeah. I could totally help him out with that.   Christian, Jason, Jesse, Me, Kate, Trisha, Shelly The Setting New York City.   The Event The Annual Barefoot Run. The Characters   Myself, Kate Kift ( Ramblings on Barefoot Running, Motherhood and Life ), Christian Peterson ( Maple Grove Barefoot Guy ), Jason Robillard ( Barefoot Running University ), Shelly Robillard ( Shoeless Shel Bell ), and Jesse Scott ( In Search of Solid Ground ) along with a few other friends.  I think its fair to say that this past weekend I drank more than I ran, I ran more than I slept, and I smiled more than all of that. To be honest, I haven't had this much fun since college so brace yourselves, people. This is going to be an epic post.   It was almost a dream to be going to the NYC Barefoot Run. I left late on Thursday night, strategically plannin