Adventure In Real Life

I've been hiking my local trails as long I've lived in this area as an adult.  So, when I came across a new-to-me trail, or segment rather, on my run today, I was giddy.  I kept stopping mid-trail to spin in a circle to see the terrain from all angles.  Every time I made it to the top of a rolling hill, I climbed up on a boulder, a bench, or a tree stump to see as far as I could see.  It was amazing.  It's why I run trails.  It's why I don't care about my running stats. It's also why I still feel a sense of adventure though I've been logging the same trail miles for years.  There's always something new to discover.  Today's hike was an especially appropriate avenue for today's blog topic "in real life."  By now you've noticed the title of the blog, I suspect.  Clearly, one of the themes is adventure.  But why "in real life?"  It's a pretty simple answer. I'm pretty normal.  I'm a woman in my mid-thirties (l...

In the wake of the release of the 2018 Western States Endurance Run lottery numbers , ultras are on my mind.  With that said, I am a yogi.  I have been practicing yoga in a physical or spiritual form since the late '90s.  Really!!  I started in 1999 and yoga has been some part of my life since then, often a small part, sometimes everything.  So what does that have to do with ultrarunning?  Some context.... A year or so after I completed my yoga teacher training and became a certified instructor, I was approached by the Endurance House in Delafield to provide yoga instruction for their  running teams and clubs .  As I introduced myself at the beginning of their first class, I introduced myself as an avid non-runner, though by this time ultras were already decidedly a part of my life.  At a lululemon event I attended, I was asked "how I like to sweat," and I laughed and said, "I don't!  That's why I do yoga!!"  I didn't run. So, h...

This is a question I ask myself often, usually on the long drive to some remote trail I'm hoping to tackle.  Why do I do it?  The "it" changes from adventure to adventure, and I've addressed some of the reasons in my last entry .  For example, I rock climb to challenge my fear of heights.  When I admit that, I have to acknowledge that a lot of what I do, I do to challenge fear.  I ran a 50k because I thought I might not be able to...was I fearful?  Not in the traditional sense, but I didn't want to fail, that's for sure.  That's a fear-based perspective, fear of failure.  I backpack alone to prove that I can. So the next question I must ask myself, and I asked myself over and over last weekend in the Porkies, is "who am I proving something to?"  Most of the time, I truly believe I'm doing things to prove them to myself.  I had to challenge that this weekend, though, when I spent four hours shivering in my tent, dreading the night ahead...

I adventure for so many reasons.  I rock climb to challenge my fear of heights.  I run trails because I used to hate running and I run ultras because I thought that I couldn't.  I hike for the clarity the quiet forest offers in my oft too busy mind.  I backpack alone for some combination of all of these reasons. I like to challenge the expectation that a girl can't backpack by herself.  Some people cite the physical challenges, carrying "all that weight" on my back for 8-10 miles a day.  Others worry about  dangerous animals.  Still others have wonder why I don't fear being alone in the woods, always with some allusion that a girl alone in the woods can turn an otherwise normal man into a monster. I recently shared my logic with my little sister who wondered, enviously to her credit, how I did it.  I told her that I believed most "bad people" are opportunists who aren't going to follow me through five miles of muck and elevationclimb with...