Leadwoman – Ragnar Tampa (12/8/18) and the official sign up

Ragnar came and went.  I had almost ran a marathon by the end of that weekend.  I got more practice running while sleep deprived and running at night with headlamps.  I met a great group of women that were so supportive of each other.  And my two besties were there too!  I mentioned to them I was still thinking about signing up for Leadwoman because the sign up was soon.  I even tried to recruit one of them to pace me.  My thought process at this point was, I’ll sign up.  Leadwoman is 5 events in the mountains around Leadville, CO in the following order: trail marathon in June (run), 50 mile bike or run (you could do both or choose one) in July, 100 mile bike in 8/10, 10 k run 8/11 and 100 mile run 8/17.  My main focus was getting to the 100 mile mountain bike event.  Their rules state you have to show up and start each event to progress in the Leadwoman series.  I knew I could run a marathon.  It was an 8-hour cutoff.  I knew I could ride Silver Rush 50 because I did 3 years before.  That would get me to the 100 MTB.  I planned go ahead and train for the 100 mile run, but I was pretty stern about if anything happened with running (injury mainly) that I would back off and just focus on training for the MTB.  (As you know, nothing happened with running which is why I had every intention of running 100).  I hadn’t run seriously since Boston 2014 so I wasn’t sure how running that many miles would feel on my new 40-year-old body versus my young 30-year-old body.  I pulled the trigger and signed up.  As a matter of fact, the morning I signed up, I ran with the Cowtown group and had a terrible 10-mile run (it was my longest run since the Cowtown ½ almost a year prior). I ran home, showered, and jumped in the car to drive to Longview to visit my dad (which ended up being the very last visit I had with him.)  I believe sign up was at 10 am mountain time so I had to pull over on the side of I-20 to sign up for Leadwoman.  There were so many things that went into that decision.  I had been thinking about it since May.  I didn’t hesitate.  Just pulled over, logged in and paid A LOT of money to do something crazy.

That was it. There was a switch that turned on the day I signed up.  Training had begun.  The discipline turned on and there was no looking back.  My dad passed away and his funeral was 12/19/18.  Right before Christmas.  What a blow.  I just kept running and riding to deal with my emotions.  As a matter of fact, I was running the moment he passed.  I know where I was, what song was playing and the emotions that seemed to take my breath away when it happened.  It turned out to be a really good way to spend time thinking about him.  I trained with Jack’s Cowtown group through the holiday season.  I even reached out to my Longview running friends, Gary Cassidy and Jose Monsivais and they made sure I had a group to run with when I was in Longview for Christmas. (Tom is who I remember running with that happened to know my brother!  I told him please don’t tell my brother!)  I was trying to explain to them what I had signed up for, but realized it’s actually really hard to follow.  One of the runners (Tomas) in the Longview group had run Leadville before.  I didn’t get to talk to him in December about it, but I did eventually get some pointers from him.