I’m starting a blog, woo! In this first blog, I am going to walk you through some of the racing and training I did in 2025, giving you a little behind the scenes into what my year was like. In subsequent blogs, I’ll go more in depth about training, racing, life, and basically anything else I have on my mind. Look forward to a new blog once or twice a month! Anyway, let’s rewind a bit…
2025 started off in a pretty great way, winning the USATF National XC race, my first national title! I had just come off of a break following a very poor performance at the NYC Marathon where I once again bonked hard, struggled with tummy troubles, and faded hard in the last half. I was in a place of building fitness, not at my peak fitness, and wasn’t sure what type of shape I was in going into that race. I surprised myself with the win, and that started my year off with a bang!
My next training cycle was focused on the USATF Half Championships in March. It was the deepest field ever assembled on US soil for a half marathon, and the top 3 would qualify to represent the US at the World Road Running Championships to be held in September later in the year (spoiler alert, that race ended up getting canceled and moved to 2026). I had been training in Boulder, CO where my husband and I live, but at the end of January I flew to Mammoth Lakes, CA to join my team and coach, Mammoth Track Club and Andrew Kastor, for a 5 week training camp. I flew out solo, and spent the first 2.5 weeks of that training camp living at the athlete crib in Mammoth, and my husband drove out to join me for the final 2.5 weeks. That training camp was great. We were doing 3 workouts a week, plus a long run. I was hitting 90-100miles per week and feeling really good! I got to experience a true Eastern Sierra snow storm where it dumped 6+ feet overnight, but was still able to run in sports bras down at round valley. That’s the beauty of training in Mammoth Lakes. Town is at 8,000ft, in the summers you can workout at the lakes basin at 9,000ft, the track is at 7,500ft, and driving 30 minutes can get you down to 4,500ft. So much can be gained from the high and low altitude training, it’s basically an endurance athlete’s dream!
I’ve never felt more fit in my life after that camp. In early March, 2 of my fellow teammates and I headed to Atlanta directly from Mammoth Lakes to compete at the half marathon championships. I was told the course was hilly, but didn’t fully understand the extent until I was mid-race. The hills were long and seemingly never ending. I don’t remember a single stretch of flat on the course. The temperature was hovering right above freezing, my favorite temperature to race in, so I couldn’t feel my legs anyway. I made the front group selection, and hung on as long as I could. I pushed the hills, and tried to let gravity do the work on the downs. I came away with an 8th place finish in a very talented field and a new PR, breaking 70 minutes for the very first time.
Walking back to the athlete tent after that race, I found myself crying tears of joy. Yeah, 8th place didn’t qualify me to worlds, and 69:30 isn’t that fast of a time, but it wasn’t about those things. It was the first race in years where I felt really strong, where I felt like I was able to push outside of my comfort zone, and where I was really proud of my performance. I PRed in the half on a really challenging course after 5ish years of not PRing in the half. I put myself in the front pack and didn’t second guess myself. I kept going when things got hard, and dug deep until I crossed the finish line. This race really solidified the last half year of training and changes I had made in my personal life.
I haven’t really spoken about it publicly, but 2024 held a ton of changes for me. I got married (hello new last name!), changed teams and coaches, walked away from my teaching job, and really struggled in running for a lot of different reasons. I knew all of the changes I ended up making at the end of 2024 were right for me, but didn’t know how they would play out long term. I went all in on running and coaching, and that was scary for me. I’ve never been sponsored, so my income has always been from my job(s) outside of running, and running sometimes provided some prize money here and there. Running has always been important to me, and I’ve made a lot of choices in my personal life to support that dream. I’ve worked jobs to support myself for as long as I can remember. I babysat through middle school, in high school I was a camp counselor and used that money to buy my first car. In college I scooped ice cream at Boulder’s famous Sweet Cow ice cream. I worked at a pre-school while getting my master’s degree. After graduating, there was a time where I was teaching, nannying, coaching, and running all at once! I’ve always had a steady income from jobs, and the thought of going all in on running and coaching and having that income be out of my control so to speak was really daunting for me. Long story short, I knew that running at this level wouldn’t always be an option, but working will always be there. So I bet on myself and never looked back. Spoiler alert– this has been the most fun I’ve ever had in my entire life and 100% made the right call.
Anyway, after half champs I took a mini-break before gearing up for the next races on my calendar. I had the Cherry Blossom 10M and USATF 25km in April, BolderBoulder in May, and the Gold Coast marathon in July. I was stoked for another opportunity to race a marathon, as the last handful of attempts had gone poorly. I not only changed coaches and training style, but I also invested time and money into working with a nutritionist to help me figure out fueling, a major factor in why my last couple marathons had gone poorly. For 3 months I learned more about fueling as an endurance runner than I ever have in the 15+ years I’ve spent running. It’s funny how you think you know something until you realize you still have so much to learn. I was nailing fueling in and outside of running and was stoked to put all the new pieces together at the Gold Coast marathon in July.
A week before Cherry Blossom I was hit with some pretty heavy personal life stuff. My dad was diagnosed with cancer. I spent the entire week going into Cherry Blossom crying myself to sleep, there were so many scary thoughts going through my head and unknowns looming in the future. When the gun went off in that race, I knew it was going to be a tough day. My legs felt heavy, and the worst they’ve ever felt in a race. It didn’t help that the race ended up being a new world record, so the pace was hot from the gun. I wanted to drop out after the 1st mile, the 2nd mile, the 3rd, 4th, and 5th. I bargained with myself to keep going even though I was getting dropped by the lead pack. I wanted to get top 3 in this race and I saw that goal run away from me. But I didn’t drop out, and I kept doing my best on the day that was given to me. I surprisingly started to feel a bit better by mile 6, and my mile 7 was catching girls in front of me. I ended up 7th overall that day and was so proud of my ability to keep going when things were hard. Thinking about my dad’s cancer diagnosis, how could I be upset with feeling bad on a race day? I get to push my body that is healthy. I get to choose this pain. Not everyone can be so lucky. After that race, I felt excited. If I could still PR and place in the top 10 on my worst day, what could I do on my best?
I went back to Boulder to put my head down for more weeks of training. My next race was the USATF 25km champs in May, and I wanted to win. I had never done this race before, so the distance and course were all new to me. I went in with curiosity, and desire to have the day I knew I was capable of. The race started and I promised myself I wouldn’t lead until at least 10km in. I had my nutrition strategy planned, and was excited to race a new distance. The gun went off, and about 100 meters into the race I found myself in the lead and thought to myself, “well, I guess I’ll take it!” I led the entire race from start to finish, and ran the last 10 km solo off the front. I took all my gels, grabbed all my bottles, and ended up with a second national title and a new American record to my name. I was shocked! I wasn’t going after any specific time, I was just out there racing, focusing on doing my best and taking in my nutrition. I wanted to win, and I made some bold moves to make that happen. The best part about it was that I was in the middle of heavy marathon training. I hadn’t really tapered for the race, and had run a 20 mile long run 5 days prior.
I headed home to Boulder with a new sense of excitement for what the next races would hold, and had 10 days until my next race, the BolderBoulder. BolderBoulder is my all time favorite race because I get to run through my hometown streets with 50,000 other runners. During this 10 day stretch there was a lot going on. There were pre-race interviews and press conferences, and I was still in the middle of marathon training. Not only that, but my dad was scheduled for surgery to get his cancer removed 4 days before the race. My head was spinning. I wanted to do it all; be there for everyone, do what everyone was asking me to, and I tried to. Looking back, I totally put taking care of myself on the back burner. I had a lot of little niggles popping up, and I didn’t give them the attention they deserved. 4 days before BolderBoulder I was up at 4am to meet my dad at the hospital to see him off before going into a 5 hour major surgery. When they wheeled him off into the operating room, I did my run, 12 miles easy up the Boulder creek path. I felt awful. I remember stopping so many times to check my phone to see if there were any updates on my Dad, and I was filled with anxiety and stress. I came back to the hospital and my hip was super tight. I remember sitting on the waiting room floor for hours stretching my hip, all while waiting to hear back from the surgeons and nurses about my dad (surgery went super well and after a long recovery and another heart surgery in September, he’s back in action).
The day after, I had a workout planned. 400’s on marshal rd. It was meant to be a pretty short and easy pre-race workout where I didn’t do anything crazy, just clicked off some road 400’s at 69/70 and then went home. I remember still feeling my hip, and the faster I went, the more pain I was in. ‘It’s nothing’, I thought– ‘I still have a couple days until the race, I’m sure I will be fine.’
Fast forward to race day. I wanted to win so bad. This was my third year in the professional race, and I had done the citizens race 4 times before that. I know the course like the back of my hand, I was fit, and I was excited to race in front of my family and friends. I had been third and seventh in previous years, and more than anything, I wanted to win for my Dad. The race started and I went straight to the front. I felt my hip almost immediately but kept pushing the 1st mile, which is always pretty fast. We came through the mile in just under 5 minutes, which feels brutal at altitude! About 2K in and we made the turn onto Folsom Street and I felt my hip go. All of this sudden I felt a huge pain go down my leg and I knew immediately something was very wrong. I stumbled and limped the next handful of steps. I couldn’t put any weight on my right side and every time I pushed off that side my hip would collapse. It felt like my hip had just been dislocated, and I had no strength in that side. I knew my race was over, but the thing about BolderBoulder is that it’s a team race and so dropping out was never an option that went through my head. I limped my way through the last 8 km of the course coming through in 10th. (Last month I got the news that an athlete in the top 10 of this race was just suspended for doping, so the results have been changed and I actually got 9th, yay clean sport!)
After that race I could barely move. I tried to cool down and couldn’t. I tried to walk but couldn’t. I knew something was bad but I didn’t know the extent quite yet. I had planned to go out to Mammoth Lakes for a 4 week training camp after this race for the final build up to the Gold Coast marathon. I figured my hip would get better with a couple of rest days so we kept our original plan to drive out to Mammoth in a week’s time. A couple days went by, then a week and things still weren’t improving. We drove out to Mammoth in hopes that a couple extra days would do the trick, but unfortunately it needed weeks of full rest, not just a couple days like we expected. I never got an MRI but based on my symptoms and swelling (it looked like I had a full sized tennis ball coming out of my hip) I’m pretty sure I partially tore my glute medius off the trochanter of my femur. Ouch, definitely don’t recommend!
After attempting to run in pain for about a week and a half we called it a season and had to pull out of the Gold Coast marathon in July. A huge bummer, after all the work I had put in. Not only did I feel like I was in the best shape of my life, and like I finally nailed my nutrition plan for the marathon, but I felt like I was on the verge of finally proving that I deserved a professional contract. My results this year were good, but I was still missing a good marathon time– proof that I am worth the investment of a shoe company. Unfortunately, that’s sports for you! Things rarely work out exactly the way you envision them to, and the best athletes are the ones who learn from their experiences and roll with the punches. So that’s exactly what I did. Instead of getting caught up in what should have or could have been, I decided to learn from my mistakes that lead to this and began looking ahead to the next one.
I spent the rest of my time in Mammoth paddle boarding and enjoying the beautiful summer in the Sierra. I came back to Boulder and went rafting on the Colorado river, and spent the rest of my time healing by gardening in my backyard and gravel biking the dirt roads around Boulder. I got to enjoy backcountry hikes with my puppies, and slow down for a little bit. It was just what I needed, and my hip progressed really well.
After a number of weeks off, I slowly eased back into running. I did only easy runs for a while, before adding in some uphill tempos, and eventually v02 max work into the schedule. After a couple weeks of workouts, I raced the 20km championships and came away with a 2+min pr and a 5th place finish, only 30 seconds off of the win. Going into that race, I didn’t have any expectations, just to go out there and give it my all. I was thrilled with that result because I knew my body was healthy again and I was just getting started.
After 20km, I drove out to Mammoth Lakes for another 6 week training camp where I ran some of my highest mileage weeks ever, hitting 120 miles a week for the first time, and tried some new workouts at 9,000ft that really pushed me mentally and physically. It was a really interesting training block. I came into it not super fit, and I was really struggling in the first 3 weeks. There were multiple workouts where I couldn’t hit splits, and felt really discouraged after seeing some of my threshold paces up at Lake Mary. I was tired from running 120 miles a week, and questioned whether or not that was really going to pay off for me. But I kept my head down, and kept putting in the work, trusting in my coach, my training, and all the daily choices I was making to help recover from the training stress. During my 4th week there I got hit pretty hard with a cold. We adjusted training for the week and I hoped that the cold wasn’t the final nail in the coffin making this training block a flop. But then I caught a glimpse of hope. I had a 10 mile time trial on Benton Crossing road at 7,500ft, where I averaged 5:24 pace, almost 15 seconds faster per mile than I did the previous year. The next week we went down to Round Valley (4,500ft) where I ran mile reps averaging 4:49. Then I ran a 6 mile threshold on Benton Crossing road at 5:09 pace. Finally, I was feeling the fitness and the weeks of high mileage and workout struggles seemed to be paying off.
At the end of the training block, I flew from Reno to Indianapolis, hoping to run a fast half at the Indy Monumental Half Marathon (I originally hoped to run the Valencia half, but was told I couldn’t get in to the elite field there). I had raced Indy many years prior and knew it was a flat and fast course. I didn’t know what the competition would be like, but knew I ultimately wanted to race the clock. Coming into the race I wanted to win, I wanted to PR, and I really thought on a good day I could run 67 min. When the gun went off, I was the lone woman in a pack of men. The pack slimmed down to 1 or 2 guys, and by mile 10 I was pretty much running solo. I didn’t have the perfect day I was dreaming of, but still PRed by over a minute, got the win, and was 11 seconds off the course record. 68:34 was my final time, and although I was disappointed, I learned SO much about myself in this race. It didn’t help that that cold I had 2 weeks prior was still in my system and I was hacking up a lung for 2 weeks straight. (Reminder to not get sick when living at 8,500ft!!)
After Indy, I made my way back home to Boulder where I would be for the next 4 weeks leading into the USATF XC Championships, where the top 6 finishers would qualify to represent USA for Worlds. My training during this time shifted– I reduced the overall volume I was doing and was focusing on intensity. I basically got away from long runs, and was working out every 3 days, alternating between grass and road workouts. USATF XC was held in Portland, OR, and when we touched down 2 days before the race, we were greeted with rain… lots of rain. I was hoping the course would be muddy and technical, and my wish really did come true. The women’s 10km race turned out to have literally everyone in it. We had track stars, marathoners, road racers, olympians, you name it! It was stacked, and I was thrilled to be a part of it. The race got out fast as expected, and I lost contact with the lead group on the first of 2 laps. I did everything I could to close the gap, but felt like I didn’t have the ability to push like I wanted to. I ended up in 11th, and ended my season there.
Even though I didn’t have the fairytale ending of qualifying for World XC, this year has been pretty good. I didn’t achieve everything I wanted, and there were definitely some bumps and turns along the way, but I’m ending this year healthy and with more clarity and passion than ever to dare boldly and chase down my big scary goals. I’m betting on myself in 2026, and can’t wait to continue to learn, fail, succeed, and smile during all of next year’s adventures. Last year I wasn’t able to race a marathon, but next year I’m hoping to change that 🙂