TrailRun1980

Under the enormous canopy of the protected ancient pine forest as I ran long winding switchbacks and rose into the clouds, I stopped to take a quick photograph and in that moment heard a distant bird call, barely discernible over the shattering noise of my own heartbeat between my ears. The ground was soft with dirt under a blanket of brown pine needles whose aroma filled the cool damp air that I was gasping to inhale. I took my photo and enjoyed the foggy scene from a movie and continued on my way. If you had told me 10 years ago that I'd be running a coastal mountain in Oregon (and summiting it twice) in the middle of a 50 mile race, I wouldn't have believed it. Hell, if you had told me 4 years ago as I trained for my half marathon, I still would have had serious doubts. And yet here I am, doing what I never thought I could. So how'd it go?   Sitting on a plane headed home, let me digest this. 6 months ago I was reading the monthly ATRA newsletter and saw

How do you implement a fun, mildly spontaneous 10K into a longer training plan for an ultra?  Well, my goal was to run these 6 miles with coworkers and have a light morning, and then follow it up with more miles on trails (and get to explore some new dirt around Green Bay perhaps) So what was my plan?  Well I didn't really have one, I had to wake up at 4 am and make the drive to Green Bay, so I figured it's make for an easy run.  Well, I was supposed to go easy, but you know how that goes... Once you show up to a big event in a smaller town with 11,000 other people, it tends to lend itself to a little excitement.  And since some of my co-workers were planning to walk, there was no way I was sticking with them, sorry but I wanna run. I decided to take the training and goals of an ultra, and compress them down to a smaller scale, kind of a half life of the race (continually looking at the remaining distance and dividing that into smaller halves, continuously, unti

First and foremost, this is 100% credit to Matthew Inman aka,  The Oatmeal , go visit his site, buy his books and stuff, I didn't create this, but, after I got into running I discovered this, and it is wonderful. It makes me laugh. I can relate. I have the book and fridge magnet and sticker, I love it. It's 6 pages of a graphic novel online, spend the 15 minutes and read it, it's worth your time. https://theoatmeal.com/comics/running

*This is very much a live list, I will be updating with more info, descriptions, and more links as time allows, always looking for more!* If I can figure out how to make an interactive map I will, but this has been on my mind since moving to Wisconsin.  Here's a list of the trails we like to run, pretty much all of these are within an hour drive from the Madison area, so they're all good. West of Madison _______________________________________________________ Military Ridge (from the Verona Park & Ride)   Military Ridge - Google Pancake flat, but dirt, also on the south side of town, for long run days I'll just run here.  Dirt, so if you need to just do some long mindless miles, this is easier on the joints.  Bikes, a lot of them sometimes, just obey the trail rules and you'll be fine.  A few road crossings, but otherwise you can zone out You are pretty exposed for most of this, and besides Verona, and then Mt Horeb, no real options for water, so pack ac