Sandy Runs

Only one week after my nasty knee skinning during a training trail run, I headed to Providence, Rhode Island to run the Rock 'n' Roll Providence Half Marathon .  This was a warm-up of sorts, as my jump back into full marathons starts next weekend in West Virginia.  Before the Providence race, my most recent big race was Grandma's Marathon in June.  I spent the interim months working on improving my speed and doing some strength training on a more or less (umm...well, mostly less) consistent basis.  But it paid off!  I set a new PR in Providence and bested my June half marathon PR by almost 3 minutes! My weekend started out with a Friday evening flight to Hartford, Connecticut to hook up with my childhood friend Sherri and her friend (well, now MY friend too) Joan.  We drove to Providence on Saturday and had much fun posing for silly photos at the expo.  The plural of Elvis is Elvi, right?  That's Joan, Sherri and me hamming it up at the Provid...

Am I an official trail runner now that I have battle scars?  I hope so.  Tell me I didn't bloody my bloody knees in vain.  If you don't like the sight of blood, it's probably too late.  You can already see my beautiful knees in all their gory glory below. My poor knees immediately after the fall.  Thank goodness for compression socks or my entire shins would have been a mess.  And thank goodness for RED compression socks, so the blood won't stain them! What happened, you ask?  Well, I'd never done any trail running until this spring.  I entered a couple races that had portions of the course on unpaved trails.  The end of the Flying Pirate Half Marathon was like that.  Not only was there a dirt trail, but there was a muddy, puddly, messy trail and it was pouring rain.  And guess what?  I loved that portion of the course.  Then I ran the Virginia Wine Country Half Marathon and quite a bit of that course was on...

I got busy, I got distracted, I realized I couldn't keep up with everything I was doing this past spring, so I let my blog slip.  But I'm back.  I still have so many races to catch up on, and many new ones scheduled for this fall and winter.  So, this is just a quick note to let everyone know what I've been up to since my last blog post in...gulp...April.  Wow!  It really has been a while!  I plan to add more details about some of these races as I go, so here are just some highlights. My last race report was the April 7th Hollywood Half Marathon.  Then I went to the Outer Banks of North Carolina to run the Flying Pirate Challenge : a 5K on Saturday, and a half marathon on Sunday.  But that wasn't enough.  I also teamed up with Marathon Maniac #5182 Scot Barco as "Team Sand-Bar" to run the Storm the Beach 5K, an obstacle course on the beach.  Running in sand is hard without obstacles, and even harder with them, but it was fun....