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o breathe and the overwhelming feeling of both being pissed off for getting off the trail again and yet also being alive i would have walked in i stare at the night window somewhere out there is my colorado trail fkt dream somewhere out there is a raging fire i escaped somewhere out there many more fires that seemingly started around the same time pressing into people s homes burning our forests and threatening firefighters lives i hack my lungs out for the next 4 days on thursday i finally get myself to see a doctor and get prescribed prednisone and an albuterol inhaler eventually things do turn for the best with my health another 4 days later and so does my mind i m at peace finally every previous time despite whether it was truly a must exit situation or one percieved as such by me at any given time it was my decision to get off the trail i questioned every one of those for the last 5 years i judged myself harshly i pointed at others who failed and kept coming back and also at those who continued despite what any normal human would label as insanity my yearly return was yearning to find answers do i have what it takes i knew the perfect throughhike of that magnitude is not possible but can things go right at least for the most part i wasn t going to quit the higher power did it for me it settled the score i m grateful the next few paragraphs are for the handful of friends of mine who are not on ig and yet they still care about what s up in my life and my running those who had read it as it was happening can skip i ve decided i had enough traveling both in spent energy and money last year and i d race less frequently and local in 2026 i built a great base from december to mid april and began my journey into racing with a 21 mile near denver it went as well or better than expected and apparently these old legs can churn some ground 3 weeks later there was a 25m race on midland trails near bv and i stayed with annie catching up with my trail child for the first time after a very long break that result was quite impressive by my own standards as well mid may came with a local ram party 55 miler f irst ultra test of the season gosh i trained so well even tapered but these distances keep getting harder with aging if you choose to put a real effort into it i had a goal when do i ever not have one i keep setting my standards high still not willing to drop them i ran every step for 29 miles and the race started with a 12 mile 5 grade uphill then began short occasional hike breaks on hills at mile 35 i was 10 min behind my prediction and mentally thought game over that very same crazy 12 mile downhill was a misery in my screaming quads and at 44 miles my infamous cramps set in i really wanted to walk but the gravity kept pulling me so i just had to churn my feet in the last 0 4 mile a little dog ran between my legs i tripped over and dropped hard on the asphalt screaming profanities somehow i mastered a coherent finish line but split second after all the cramping and pain just washed me fully i let go of pretense and hoped l arry would catch me real life is often looking not nearly as pretty as the images we share i got my time goal 3rd female and while i swore off ultras in the moment the next morning the curiosity within was awaken yet again what am i capable of i don t get excited before the races i wonder what i am made of when shit gets hard i guess i am still in the game indeed as the song says doesn t matter what i ve done matters what i am doing back to training it is i m here representing the older generation who refuses to give up my mother turned 90 on mother s day and my sister is a blessing for taking care of her wish i could give them both a hug larry and i rolled over 18 years of romance and building life together 19 since meeting the first time he s my rock hurting when i hurt yet letting me fall and fail and always proud of the work i do here s to many more years of being caught by my best friend and love of my life 5 weeks after ram party 55m included the final training block push with check points of incline and pikes peak in pr and a goodbye to a pinch of ashes of my late portland adventure buddy mike bushwhacker then a taper week for my a goal race this front half of 2026 ring the spring 100k nearly 66 miles with over 11k vert gain we got a heatwave of 95f in town and mitigating the distance and the elements was the name of the game i executed my plan to a t and miraculously my body and mind came together when i needed it intermittent rolling clouds and some wind at high altitude provided little reprieve from what could have been worse as the sections between the aid stations were long and hard and open i focused on the here and now one step one sticky gel and electrolyte bottle at a time it was definitely beneficial to know the trails intimately and always be able to predict when to switch the effort levels larry met me at near mile 41 for crewing all professional quick and without extra words or emotions the only bad bout of cramps came in the last 2 miles making me carefully walk the ridge trail before dropping to the finish line and i didn t fall for a lot of the race i ran around a young kid eric who impressed me with his calmness and steadiness although to think i was at my best when he wasn t even born despite the relatively small field i still moved up through it proving yet again that my strengths are patience long distances and less fading in the second half than many others i stuck to my splits like glue a 15 hrs chart for 64m came to a 15 18 finish on a final changed course 65 8m and it was good enough for 2nd f and 9th oa the placing doesn t mean that much but it felt extremely satisfying to do justice to my training and fitness level i might be older but also seasoned tired though this time period also included larry s return to trail racing after a 4 years gap with a win in the men s division in 25k and a visit from his son and a girlfriend this concludes the first 6 months of the year my next goal is san juan softie 100m on august 14th and i m about to put a couple of weeks of training starting with today s barr camp adventure this weekend though larry and i are going to spend some quality time in the indian peaks wilderness before the next chapter rolls my life in a tight grip posted by olga at 1 27 pm no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest monday june 29 2026 an act of god or my colorado trail journey s end i d like to be as short as possible since these days the attention span is measured in less than 5 sentences but how can you be when it s an 8 year thing and i feel it deserves some justice it all started when i was hit with some kind of fatigue ots sort of thing at the end of 2013 not being able to run and race i turned to the thing i love to do backpacking to spend time in the mountains turned out my normal is 30 mile days for 7 14 days while cooking and doing the things every through hiker does in 2018 i made my first ct trip and just prior learned about fkt s and that there isn t one for the ct for a female in self supported style which is what i do carry all go alone occasionally resupply so after completing it in 15 days and some hours and getting my trail name cat magnet i submitted the result and it was accepted only i was wondering if i could do better you know i cooked every morning and night i stopped way before sunset sometimes as early as 6 pm and i even knitted plus my pack weighed 45 lbs just by adding 2 3 hrs extra walking and not cooking and not resupplying i only stopped at 2 stores on the way and now having learned about much lighter gear packs tents etc the thought persisted i tried my hand foot at the collegiate loop 165m inside the ct and got the first unsupported record in 2020 i figured it s time to give it a shot only miraculously i returned to my first love for the self expression running and racing and with my job albeit part time involving other people s schedule once i schedule a time away it can t be moved that s an introduction in 2021 i started from durango went 3 full days and a change and couldn t breathe some sort of asthma or whatever i bailed in retrospect this one was the dumbest dnf of all but it s because i have high standards for myself and high expectations in 2022 because i have to wait a full year to schedule my time off i went the same way broke my pole on day 1 got hit with a severe snow storm in high country of san juan and while fighting it there s nowhere to set up the tent the whole day with 1 pole threw my back i bailed the next morning 2023 was my knee surgery i returned in 2024 and hit it in the midst of monsoon remember i can t move days due to work and i can t predict the weather 2 month in advance i battled feet problems from day 1 not kidding blisters piling up atop blisters with moisture and walking 40 miles a day with 35 lb pack which began getting infected spitting puss from everywhere and those things on the bottom of your feet well you can t step down on your feet i was determined though as the weather improved by day 4 and i gave it so much time by now eventually the added trench foot condition was the final draw i made it through 7 days couldn t walk for 2 weeks after well 2025 came and larry and i discussed what if i start from denver the easier end i did only i got sick 3 days prior with some cold hoping it ll go away i don t get sick i started anyway the exertion piled up my health deteriorated quickly i was running a fever hacking phlegm and couldn t breathe you guessed it i bailed on day 4 that was supposed to be the end i did a rainbow trail fkt just to scratch the itch much shorter and called it only reminiscing around christmas with larry about the year and mentioning i m a little sad that i ll never know if i could he suddenly said you should do it supported that lit the spark it shouldn t have as i never like to ask for help involve other people and all this stuff reason number whatever i don t do pacers and crew in ultras since larry could only come bring me food every coule of days not the full blown meet me at every road intersection carry tiny pack have pacers night sleep set up and so on it felt like a waste of supported style and going after a faster time after months of thinking i said i ll go unsupported again because the purity of can i do better laid in it all not in doing the distance 2026 came the schedule had a tight squeezed fit and 4 days after finishing a hard 66 mile race i started according to my strava data i did so much better than last year i won t describe the daily highs and lows as it s not what matters i know i was determined no matter what i even had a switch the style or the option as an alternative if things go wrong and still go on only as i was mostly though day 4 having passed the bail out point of last year with an internal high five and coming to the top of the hill at mile 32 i was stopped by 2 through hikers sitting down now i m an introvert to begin with and when i go for miles time effort i barely say hello but they really persisted to talk the showed me the app watch duty for the fires and said they just got notified everything going southbound the direction i was moving is closed the fire boundary is literally 5 10 miles down and the next trailhead that i was to pass in 2 miles was closed everybody gets emergency evacuation the fire sparked a couple of hours ago and grew from 10 acres to a1000 that quickly i didn t quite believe them called larry a few minutes later he found the info i decided to go down anyway where else would i go and see if the entry to the next trail section was truly closed as i came down literally within 100 yards a sar truck pulls in a woman jumps out sees me runs up saying i must stop it s basically like a police arrest order and they are taking me to leadville my initial reaction was what the fuck noq give me some grace i am sleep deprived exhausted from 40 mile days under fueled and dehydrated heat exerted and i spent 5 years going for it i am 56 i can t do it neither to myself no to larry who hasn t seen a real vacation in all those years this try was for us as a family his support and patience and encouragement despite hating what it did to me physically and emotionally was above and beyond anything a partner could have asked for it was our try at this fkt and it was shot with a gun who s that idiot starting a campfire in stage 2 restriction why and then settling down while sitting in the truck and listening to these amazing sar folks and learning details it hit me i could have been dead if those 2 folks didn t stop me if they didn t have an app which they actually used and i don t even do apps if i didn t spend 10 minutes talking with them while still been uncertain about what to do i would have come down before the sar truck pulled in it was truly a developing situation walked across to the next trailhead and began climbing to my spot for the night which was exactly where the fire edge was i mean i am not kidding there might be people who are actually in the zone hikers without any idea inside this fast spreading death the next hour i spent crying that i was so close to be gone fkt be damned it s bad enough what i do to my body to larry s emotional state while sitting at home watching the dot move it could have all been gone in a flash quite literally larry of course came to my rescue getting me from leadville shelter where i was officially evacuated to i am still shaken to the core and processing a lot about this event my i must know if i can do better than my first try and life in general and this my friends where i leave you to make it as short as possible photos here posted by olga at 7 13 am 3 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest monday november 03 2025 2025 racing season is done and dusted at the beginning of the previous century gathering the funds for the first expedition to everest george mallory said if you can not understand that there s something in man which responds to the challenge of the mountain and goes out to meet it the struggle as the life itself upward and forever forward then you won t see why we go such a true statement to enjoy life for some of us is to drive forward towards challenges playing on the edges as one of my best longest and inspiring friends ronda put it i love that we still try hard i m not buying into this old washed up stuff got to be careful of the stories we tell ourselves to my advantage or detriment i possess the desire and drive to keep pushing my own limits coming on 3 years ago over christmas a ski accident left me with a torn acl mcl and meniscus i never doubted a comeback and after having one and then another knee surgery i was running strong and unfazed again 2025 was my 26th official year of racing holy moly how time flies and i m still extremely anxious before each and every time i pin a number on my shor...