Many many years ago, we met a young brewer and I fell in love with his beers. OK, one beer in particular - his Wee Heavy. The brewer, Bill Madden, moved around a few times to other breweries and Beer Geek and I followed him wherever he went. I don't know if he knew he had a fan girl, but I was totally that girl. And then about 10 years ago, we had the chance to be involved when he opened his own brewpub. Over the last 9 years, I have spent many many hours at Mad Fox and with the amazing friends that we have made through there. I got to brew Wee Heavy once... I celebrated my 40th birthday there... We celebrated our 20th anniversary there... We spent more weekend days than I can count at festivals … [Read more...]
The weekend I ran all the miles
Sometimes I intentionally make crazy choices. Sometimes crazy choices find me. This weekend was a case of the latter happening. Back in December, Pacers Running offered an amazing discount if you signed up for 5 races at once. Since they are my local running store and race company, I often run their races. I decided to make the GW Parkway 10 miler my spring goal race and chose 4 other races to run. One of those four was the Clarendon Day Double - a 5k + a 10k with a mile uphill walk in between. Flash forward to September. I realized a couple of weeks ago that Clarendon Day fell on the Sunday after Ragnar DC. Oops? So, I had a lot on my plate for the weekend. I'll do a full Ragnar DC recap in a few days, but short story - I had … [Read more...]
5 Stages of Ragnar Relay Packing
Packing for Ragnar is an art not a science, but I go through the same 5 stages every single time. 1. Panic! You don't know where every thing is, you need to do a load of laundry, and you don't know what you want to wear. This stage is often the longest stage as you throw laundry in the wash and buy a bunch of items via Amazon Prime. Sometimes this stage lasts days. It's ok. You'll get through it. 2. Gathering The gathering phase is the one where you fold all that laundry and find all the random items that have wandered away since your last Ragnar Relay. You also obsessively check your Amazon orders to see when they will be delivered. During this phase, your "staging site" becomes a mound of running clothes, lights, and … [Read more...]
Ragnar Relay and Scott James Jewelry
I know those seem like a random combination, but really they are related. ;o) I recently got chosen to be a Scott James Jewelry Ambassador. I love their stuff and have quite a collection of charms. I received a necklace a few years back that I used to commemorate my journey to Venus and I've also bought a few Ragnar charms. As I gear up to run Ragnar Trail Richmond, I've already picked out the charms I plan to get afterwards (see I told you the two topics were related.) Speaking of Ragnar, another ambassador and I hosted a Ragnar event at Mad Fox Brewpub last night. It was a lot of fun and we had several new to Ragnar people there asking questions. Having run Ragnar DC twice, I had plenty of advice - most of which boiled … [Read more...]
Will run for beer: Four Courts Four Miler
This weekend was cold! It would have been cold even if we'd had a normal winter, but after wearing a tank top on Tuesday, 24 degrees and windy was a shock to the system. Too bad though as we had the Four Courts Four Miler to run. Back in December, Pacers (a local race company) had a sale on races - if you bought 5 or more races, it was 50% off. I used to race their races all the time, but got so busy with half marathons and kids and other life stuff that I stopped. But hey, with that kind of deal, who could resist? Saturday was my second race of the five that I purchased: Four Courts Four Miler. As I mentioned on Friday, there's so much to love about this race, except that it's often quite cold. This weekend, the race did was both … [Read more...]
Ragnar DC 2016 Recap: Mad Fox 12 Pack
Once again Ragnar DC did not disappoint. I did not plan to run Ragnar DC this year as the date is right at the beginning of the school year and just a couple of weeks before a conference I attend for work. But when my friend asked me to help captain a team for Mad Fox Brewpub, I couldn't resist. I mean, beer and running. What could be better? This was my first time captaining but I have a lot of friends who've done it, so it went pretty smoothly. We did have a little excitement when our first start time was 1:45, which would mean a midnight finish. Oops. Thankfully, Ragnar fixed that so we started at 8:45am. We also lost one runner about two weeks ago, but were able to replace her quickly. And then I got a text from a runner … [Read more...]
Five tips for a fun Ragnar
I love to run Ragnar! Unlike marathons, which I seem to find myself accidentally signed up for, Ragnar is something I love to do. In fact, eventually, I'd like to run every Ragnar out there (but no, I won't be that person who runs them all in one year LOL. I'm packed and mostly ready to go. Just need to get some sleep and then we'll pack the van in the morning. All of my outfits are in their individual plastic bags (one of the best tips ever!) and I've just got a few last minute things to add in the morning. So here are five tips to make sure Ragnar goes smoothly and is a lot of fun! Upload the pace calculator to Google Drive. This allows you to easily edit it and lets the other van know if the team is getting ahead of or … [Read more...]
Preparing to run Ragnar DC again
I ran my first Ragnar Relay at the Ragnar DC two years ago. It was an amazingly fun experience and I couldn't wait to run one again. We got lucky and our team won a free entry into Ragnar Cape Cod the following spring. I was afraid going in that it wouldn't be as much fun as the first one. After all, the bar had been set pretty high. Ragnar Cape Cod was amazing. I loved the course, my team was amazing, and Beer Geek and I followed up with a week exploring the area. I knew I'd run Ragnar again, but wasn't sure when or more importantly, where. After all, I love to travel and run in new places. I almost ran DC again last year, but life intervened (thank goodness, it was cold and rainy most of the race.) And with going for Mercury … [Read more...]
