The Wild Dog Blog

Tag: marathon

  • “What Do You Think About When You’re Running?” – Dunes 50K, April 26 2025

    Dunes 50K – 6 hours & 25 minutes – 3rd Overall Female, 13th Overall

    “This is what I’m good at” I keep repeating to myself as I push to the finish, imagining I’m a freight train, legs unstoppable at the end of a race. While most people are starting to walk and wish for the day to be done, I’m coming alive.

    “I’m not the fastest, but I might be the strongest” so I know that if I stay focused, my legs will have no problem with a big effort in the last 6 miles of the race despite the fatigue from hours of running sand dunes in the south Florida heat.

    “This is why I train the way I do. To back down now would be a waste of all of those hours I spent hiking on the treadmill and under a heavy barbell.” By the last few miles of the race, I’m sure I’ve created enough of a gap between myself and the 4th place female that I’ve secured a podium finish, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is finishing knowing I gave my honest best. I don’t want to finish on cruise control, just because I’ve guaranteed myself a spot on the podium. I want to finish right on the edge of what I’m capable of, because that’s why I’m out there. To find out how deep I can dig when it seems impossible that there could be anything left.

    I think about Jasmin Paris who was the first woman to finish the notorious Barkley Marathons. I think about how race director Gary Cantrell aka Lazarus Lake described what she achieved as a “mathematical impossibility.” On paper, she was not capable of doing what she did. She tapped into a reserve that couldn’t be measured and did the impossible.

    I round the final corner of the trail and sprint the last stretch to the finish. “What’s possible for me if I continue to explore?”

  • A Test of Mindfulness

    When I first started ultrarunning, I relied almost entirely on grit to get to the other side of long training runs and tough races. I found myself drawing from a deep well of stubbornness and determination to not be a quitter. 

    This is a strength in its own right and I certainly still play to this side of my mental toughness. But to tap into the next level of performance I’ve found myself focusing less on what I want to avoid – quitting – and focusing more on what I want to cultivate – presence. 

    At the start line, I used to ask myself how gritty I would choose to be and now I ask myself how present I will choose to be. Can I allow the ebb and flow of discomfort and accept and move with whatever comes my way? Can I be so focused on each step that the finish line becomes almost obsolete, a forgotten byproduct of the day?

    The gritty side of mental toughness is useful and has its place no doubt, but to make an ultramarathon a test of mindfulness has brought a new layer of meaning and fulfillment to the adventure.

  • Raise Your Floor

    At the start of last summer, my goal for running was to “raise my floor.” Living in south Florida means accepting a performance drop over the summer due to the extreme heat. But how much better could I make my hardest days in the hardest conditions? They may not come close to my best performances in cooler weather, but I believed there was still improvement to be had. 

    I was right. I surprised myself with the paces I could sustain in 90+ degree temps while keeping my effort and heart rate under control. I had improved from the previous summer and continued to improve all summer long. I successfully raised my floor. By the time the weather started cooling down in October, I felt physically and mentally fit and prepared to spend the better weather of the winter season raising my ceiling with faster efforts and bigger miles. 

    Surrendering to a challenging season doesn’t mean we lay down in defeat. It means we make the most of what we’ve been handed so when the better weather eventually rolls in, as it always does, it finds us ready and willing. 

    If you’re not in a season of raising your ceiling, how could you be raising your floor so that you’re ready to level up when the time comes?

    Wild Dog Athletics offers individualized remote strength and endurance coaching to help you stay on track toward your goals, in all seasons of life. Go to: https://www.wilddogathletics.com/ to learn more about who we are, what we do, and how we do it.

  • The Best Part of an Ultramarathon

    The finish line of an ultramarathon is not the best part, it’s not the thing to anticipate, to look forward to, or to wish for – the best part is the being out there, the being in it, the journey and what’s discovered along the way. Eyes wide open and let time move slowly, for when it’s done it’s done and I can never seem to soak it in enough.

    Even when it’s hard, even when it hurts – I take heart – because that means I’m still in the best of it, the day is not finished, there is more to the story that has yet to unfold and more to the trail that has yet to be traveled.

  • Honor Your Curiosities

    It’s 2023 and I’m on the edge of my couch, with my face in my hands, watching my alma mater Florida Atlantic University lose and get knocked out of the championship in their first ever trip to the Final Four. I’ve never been a basketball fan. But the hype of watching FAU beat the odds all season long got me hooked. The let-down of their loss starts to sink in as I spoon the last of a pint of ice cream into my mouth and watch the camera pan across the players’ faces of despair and disbelief. I’m depressed – but at the same time – another familiar feeling starts to rise to the surface.

    That night, I type into Google “basketball coaches near me.” I’m 27 years old and I’ve decided I’m going to take a basketball lesson. When I tell my friends and family, they laugh and ask me “why?” The best reason I can come up with is because I watched March Madness, which doesn’t make it any more logical, and probably makes it less logical. But the truth is, I can’t tell them why because there is no reason why. It’s not logical. It’s curiosity.

    While the basketball lesson did not, shockingly, lead to a WNBA career – it did lead me to think about how often my actions are driven by curiosity without reason, without needing to know where something will lead or why I’m doing it, and how my life has unfolded with possibility in ways I never could have predicted as a result.

    In 2018, I ran a 7 mile trail race and saw other runners at the same race completing 50 miles and 100 miles. I thought that looked like a pretty cool accomplishment and adventure – so despite 13 miles being the longest I had ever run at that time, I came back and ran the 50 mile distance the next year. I’ve been traveling the country running ultramarathons ever since.

    In 2021, I was watching Katie Ledecky dominate swimming at the Tokyo Olympics. I thought the swimmers looked so beautiful and free in the water, and suddenly felt drawn to being in the water myself. I had no swimming experience and had felt no interest in swimming up until that exact moment. I signed up for a local masters swim team that week to learn, and have been swimming ever since – competing at Masters Nationals, in local triathlons, and in long distance open water swims.

    When I made the decision to try both ultrarunning and swimming on somewhat of a whim, I was predictably asked “why?” by my friends and family. And early on, I didn’t have an answer for them or even for myself. All I had was that little spark of curiosity and interest, and an unrestrained instinct to act on that spark – no matter how seemingly small or illogical. In fact, if I look back on my life, the most meaningful and transformative pursuits started without a clear “why.” The why was something I slowly pieced together over time once I was actually out there doing the thing. In a culture that constantly preaches the importance of “knowing your why,” it turns out knowing your why, at least initially, is not all that important and life changing.

    What’s important and life changing is honoring your curiosities and interests by taking action. Giving yourself permission to not know why in order to try, to not need to make your actions logical to other people or even to yourself. If you wait for an obvious and logical reason to act, I think you’ll be waiting your whole life. Some people do wait their whole lives and will always wonder what could have been. Some people wait until their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and wish they would have started sooner. As a strength and endurance coach, I hear that story all the time.

    Take the basketball lesson. Tune in and act on that spark of curiosity you’ve been dismissing just because you can’t come up with a clear why. It might lead to very little, like my basketball lesson did, and that’s okay. But it also might lead to adding surprising new chapters to your story that you never could have written while sitting on your couch waiting and wondering. In my experience, you’ll find that when you act, the why you’ve been waiting for has actually been waiting for you.

    Ready to act on your curiosities? Wild Dog Athletics provides online coaching and programming to help you reach your goals and embark on new adventures. Go to: https://www.wilddogathletics.com/ to learn more.

  • Life is Like an Ultramarathon

    When I show up at the start line of an ultramarathon, I expect to be challenged and tested. I expect obstacles. I expect to get tossed around a bit and I don’t expect everything to go my way.

    Life is like an ultramarathon – some days we get handed triumph, and some days we get handed tribulation – and which one we’re handed on any given day is completely out of our control. Most people know this, but still don’t expect it, so when things get tough they’re surprised and unprepared.

    To approach life like an ultramarathon means expecting and preparing to face challenges so that when they arrive we’re able to endure them and make use of them. I’ve run enough ultras to now know that struggle is either a price I have to pay or something that can pay me. I can fear it and resist it, or I can accept it and be curious about who it’s asking me to become.

  • Prepare to the Best of Your Ability

    Prepare to the best of your ability so that when you win, you can take pride in knowing you’ve earned it. 

    Prepare to the best of your ability so that when you lose, you can take comfort in knowing you did everything within your knowledge and power to give yourself a shot. 

    I’ve been on both sides of the table. Backed by months and months of relentless preparation and work, I’ve won and felt the satisfaction of the outcome matching the input. Conversely, after allowing some gaps in my game to go unaddressed, I’ve lost and felt the disappointment in reflecting on all of the ways I could have prepared better.

    What does preparing to the best of your ability mean to you? To me it means not cutting corners or leaving any stone unturned – in my sport, in the gym, in my lifestyle choices, and in how I’m training my mind. I try to pass this along to my athletes because winning and losing will always be outside of their control. But how they prepare will determine how they feel about themselves when they stand on top of the podium or walk away empty handed. And isn’t that what matters most?

    Wild Dog Athletics has 1 new athlete spot open for March. Go to https://www.wilddogathletics.com/ to learn how I go beyond the program to help you prepare for your big goals and wild adventures.

  • Suffering is Optional

    “Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.”

    Is it the ultramarathon that creates suffering or the mind?

    In the ultramarathon community, it’s a common preaching that athletes need to learn how to “love” or “embrace” the suffering. And while this isn’t completely off-base, the more ultramarathons I run the more I realize that what’s most important is choosing whether or not I’m going to label what I’m experiencing as “suffering” in the first place. 

    I can teach my mind to not suffer needlessly by being aware of the stories I’m creating around my experience. When I’m throwing up on the side of the trail I can choose to perceive that experience as neutral, something that just is, rather than labeling it as good or bad or writing a story about what it means for the rest of the day. When labels and stories are removed or carefully chosen, you’d be surprised at how quickly the “suffering” dissipates.  

    Ultramarathons themselves don’t create suffering. How I perceive what I experience during an ultramarathon is what creates suffering. 

    The question then changes from “What can I endure?” to “How will I choose to endure it?”

  • Be Like The Mollusk

    The mollusk’s life work is its shell.

    Layer by layer it builds its shell from the surrounding environment over the course of its lifetime. It doesn’t do so because of reward or recognition and it knows nothing of outcomes – it simply keeps showing up to build. For the mollusk, the act of showing up and building something is enough.

    When the mollusk dies, the shell is released and carried away by the sea. Sometimes the shell finds its way to shore where it gets picked up by human hands and cherished as something beautiful. But the mollusk didn’t build its shell with this outcome in mind. It was doing what it intuitively knew it had to do until it couldn’t anymore, and the shell became something beautiful to the world in its own time.

    How could you be more like the mollusk? Where in your life could you be more present with the showing up – the building, the crafting, and the creating?

    As you go about your week, notice how your concern with outcomes influences the quality and presence with which you work at the things that are important to you. When you let go of outcomes and allow the work itself to be the reason and the reward, you’ll no longer need validation to show up each day and give your best effort.

  • Are You Being Derailed or Redirected?

    It’s 2018 and I’m in the middle of the build-up to my first marathon. I’m putting in more miles than ever before and hoping to run a Boston Marathon qualifying time. But being new to marathon running, I don’t know how to ease into big miles properly and end up getting injured. A few weeks before the race I’m forced to pull my entry, feeling devastated that the injury completely derailed me from my goal. I spend the 3 weeks of healing time thinking (or stewing) about what would come next. 

    I eventually manage to get back to short runs pain free, but at that point I no longer have the fitness or time left in the season to chase a Boston qualifier. Feeling unmotivated and discouraged, I start scouring the Internet for something different that could get me excited to train again. I stumble across a 7 mile trail race in my area and think it sounds interesting and that it will give me a mental break from the monotony of road running. I sign up, not knowing what to expect, but excited to train for a race purely for fun and for an adventure. 

    The trail race is a blast and not only do I get hooked on trail running, but at the race I see other runners completing distances I hadn’t known were possible – ultra distances – 50K, 50 miles, and 100 miles. I think about what an amazing accomplishment it would be to finish an ultramarathon. One year later, I’m back at the same race to run the 50 mile distance – crossing the finish line in 15 hours and change. I’ve been running ultramarathons around the country ever since. 

    What I initially thought was derailing me back in 2018 when I came up injured a few weeks before my road marathon was actually redirecting me. Because of the injury, I discovered that fateful 7 mile trail race where I was introduced to ultrarunning and as a result led to a life full of travel and adventure. 

    What we think is derailing us is often redirecting us. When we remember how often a perceived “derailer” became a “redirector” in hindsight, we can face obstacles and challenges with faith in all that we do not know and maybe even with excitement about what we can discover if we have the courage to keep moving forward.