Saucony Virratas - Possible 100 mile shoe contender? As I've said before, I'm ready to register for a 100 miler. I'm ready to see if I have it in me. Its hard for me to believe that just three years ago a ten miler was HUGE for me. So, yeah. Its scary but I'm ready.   So why haven't I signed up for a 100 yet? Its not that I haven't had plenty of inebriated hours of just fucking around online visiting various race sites that offer 100 milers. In fact, there's a handful of races I would have already signed up for in the midst of a drunken stupor (which, by the way, according to a few of my ultra running friends, is how they started ultra running) but not one race is in California. And since it looks like my 100 miler is going to have to be somewhat local, I'm slacking on finding the perfect race. There's a myriad of good reasons why I'm putting this task aside and at the moment I don't feel like compiling the list of bullshit reason...

Looking out over Lake Tahoe from the Flume Trail - Coming down from Tunnel Creek. To run a hundred miles is an epic achievement , but to run a hundred miles of the Tahoe Rim Trail with a saucy, irreverent and misbehaving crew is a whole different challenge in itself. But, for all our mischief we did our best to get our runner to the finish line. Meeting up with the Robillards and Jesse Scott up in Tahoe this past weekend was another colossal experience for me. I'd never crewed a runner before and since the 100 mile distance is on my own radar I wanted to experience a little bit of what that would be like. The four of us met up in Truckee to load up the crew truck and meet our last crew member (and one of Jesse's pacers), Jon Sanregret, in Carson City for a late lunch. Of course that meant Mexican food and margaritas. Just a few margaritas. But who's counting, right? After lunch we headed over to the Carson City Legislative building for the mandatory pre-r...

View of Lake Tahoe from the Flume Trail  Funny how my mind works. I woke up the other morning and decided that I was ready to try a 100 miler. I was SO ready, in fact, I almost signed up for one. In September. In Michigan. The Hallucination 100. I was THIS close to registering. But my coach recommended that I give myself a little more time to prepare and  my husband thought I should stay closer to home.    In fact, my husband jokes that I can just run 1200 laps around our court. All the neighbors will bring out their chairs and cheer me on while I just run in circles. For fun. Afterall, its all about the love of running, right?   Or is it? If it is all about the love of running I should be happy to do just any race. I should be happy with running a race on the same trails I've ran before in my own backyard. There's some pretty awesome trails out here and I haven't even come close to to exploring even one tenth of them. So why do I gravitate towards ...

Not that I would be proud of being labeled a "barefoot bad girl," or maybe I would??? I don't know. Frankly I don't care what you call me. After reading my latest blog post I can only imagine I have a few labels already eternally applied to my forehead. So what's another?  I got together with my blogger girlfriends over Skype last week and what transpired was completely delinquent misbehavior and inappropriateness. Personally, I prefer to call it what it is. Good times. But, I was drinking so my judgement may be slightly off. I'm posting a link to the most recent Run Barefoot Girl Podcast. But before you get all click-the-link-happy expecting to hear women wax on about their inspired barefoot running achievements, please understand that this particular podcast contains sexually explicit language and subject matter, intoxicated discussion of personal topics and body parts, the unrestrained use of the word "vagina" and very little conversation abou...

Injury prone people shouldn't touch themselves too much. This post could possibly get me into some trouble   considering my recent contact with Google regarding some crazy malware notice that my site was defaulting to every time you visit. I'm l ucky to have some very helpful (and surprisingly geeky) facebook friends who helped me find the offending code that was causing the issue on my site .  But in case you're wondering, I practice safe blogging. My blog will not give your computer some skanky high tech STD. I promise. I'm totally clean. At first I thought my site may have been hacked due to its popularity (I could have sworn my stats were exponentially increasing over the last few months.) There was no hacking. Apparently my blog is not popular enough to be hacked. What's up with that? The truth hurts. Did I mention this post could get me into trouble? Not because of the whole asking to be hacked bit just now, (if you're a hacker please don'...

I'm thinking a good Lay can help with this midlife bullshit. I've reinvented myself three times in my life. Just before my freshman year in high school I remember making a series of rash fashion choices by chopping my hair off and adopting a dark wardrobe that consisted of my dad's old baggy Coast Guard pants, thrift store sweaters, and dark eye makeup. I wasn't going to win any beauty contests but I was hoping to add a touch of intimidation to my perpetual "cuteness." I guess I was worried about being picked on considering I didn't know a lot of kids at my high school. It didn't work. I still got my hands slammed in my locker and my books scattered around freshman hall. Go figure. I blame it on the skaters.   While my high school reinvention was probably the most dramatic externally, the other reinventions have turned out to be some of the most significant internal growing periods of my adult life. They were marked with unequivocal changes in...

Do you hear that slapping sound? Ok. Maybe you didn't. Its the sound of me slapping my forehead. I'm a bit disoriented from some online discussions going on and thought I would share. I usually don't post about certain discussions that I will unwittingly follow from time to time on the barefoot running blogosphere (some of them are like a car crash and you just have to watch). Frankly, a lot of these discussions end in moot points and wounded egos and I really don't have the energy to waste on that kind of shit. But, today I'm full of energy (I just ate half a container full of chocolate covered espresso beans) I'm just going to throw my two cents into the center ring and then sit back and watch all those barefoot purists and minimalists-shoddies slaughter each other hunger games style. There's an ongoing debate amongst the barefoot purists and shoe wearers. I don't want to get into the details, but lets just suffice it to say that both sides feels...