Tales of Trails, Mountains and Rocky Roads

Having being a competitive athlete for so long now, I 'm normally pretty chilled out when it comes to racing these days - that is unless it's one of my A races - and yet going into this year's Coldwater Rumble 20-mile trail race, I felt a little nervous and maybe even a little under pressure. Last year I won the race and was pretty close to the ladies' course record, and even though I already knew I wasn't running as fast as this time last year, I still couldn't help feeling that I would end up comparing my times. In addition, having being invited back to the Aravaipa Racing Team for a second year, I felt that I needed to perform well and run a decent time - needless to say when I had a touch of the trots on Friday evening, I didn't think too much of it and just put it down to a little pre-race nerves. The past week or so in Phoenix has been much cooler compared to normal standards, and whilst "the high country" up north had experienced heavy...

My initial race plans for 2017 didn't include the San Tan Scramble and I only registered for it a couple of weeks ago with the intention of using it as a good, solid training run. Unlike most of my other races in recent years, this one was "only" 26km, or just over 15 miles - half the distance of what I'm used to these days. This would mean running at a faster pace and pushing myself outside of what has become my comfort zone for ultra running. The race also came just 4 weeks after the Desert Solstice 24 hour track race and whilst I felt like I had now recovered from that, the true test would come during this race, when I found out how well my legs actually coped with both the pace and the climbs. Although the race started at a reasonable time of 8am, it was almost a 90 minute drive to Queen Creek for us and whilst we'd allowed ourselves plenty of time to get there, we lost 20 minutes queueing for an early morning coffee from Dutch Brothers and I was star...

The past couple of weeks have been pretty awesome and it's been the perfect way to end what's been an amazing year. A couple of weeks ago, I had the official invitation from Aravaipa Running to join their racing team for another year. It was a great feeling to be invited back - whilst I feel like I've had a good year of racing during 2016, I never take things for granted and with so many other good lady runners in the Phoenix area, I wasn't 100% sure that I would be on the team again. There are some new faces on the team for 2017 and it's a great group of athletes that I can't wait to get to know and share the trails with throughout the coming year. Being invited back to the team has once again increased my motivation ten fold, and with a new coach to guide me, I'm hoping for some good races again over the next 12 months. I've already entered some events that will be used as training towards my main racing goals f0r 2017 and I'm being  a lit...