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@ashruns100s

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Servant of the Most High God 🙏
✝️ROMANS12:2 ❤️JOHN8
Sharing moments & misadventures collected from mountain/ultra/trail running since 2008
👇🌲🏃🏼‍♀️

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WHO IS READY TO RUN?!! 🍂🏃‍♂️🏃‍♀️🍁 The temps are FINALLY dropping! Which means our annual 50k, Half, and crazy 50/50 all-or-nothing challenge are just around the corner! We’ve got plenty of spots left in the half, but we’re about to close up the 50k & the speedsters 50/50 challenge! 🚫 THERE IS NO RACE DAY REGISTRATION! 🚫 Event updates will be coming to you via email shortly. Be sure you read them + the handbook so you are in the loop before race day! 📩 by @ashruns100s

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13 days ago

(Yes, I tested high on the spectrum.) #ultrarunning 🩵🌲⛰️ by @ashruns100s

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4 months ago

SURRENDER 🙏

Yesterday, I completed another 50+ mile week. I know that’s not a ton to most runners, but for me, it’s a win. Looking through the paces & HR data, it’s also easily the best I’ve *consistently* performed since I started running back in 2008.🤯 I’m fast, I’m durable, and I’m energized.

How? I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense on paper. I would like to say it’s got something to do with almost two decades of discipline, but that has not always been enough. I am aging. I have a ton of wear and tear, and still running with stage 3 kidney disease. My life stress is at an all time high. Our youngest just graduated, and I am in school chasing down a JD. I was recently elected to our county’s school board. And of course I work and coach, and this summer my husband is out of commission post surgery.

Running SHOULD be going poorly right now ….but it’s not! I am convinced that my renewed health and fitness is a sweet gift from God himself.

If you’re a believer you’re probably familiar with the term “surrender”. Last year, that’s what I did with running. After months and months of poor health and inability to run, and begging God to give me health, I finally said, “Ok, you know what fine! If I can never run again, fine! You can have it. Just use me how you need me. Whatever that looks like.”

I fully let go of #running… and funny enough, that’s when it all came back. 🙏 by @ashruns100s

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4 months ago

I ran my first 100 in 2010. 16 years later and I still love doing the bulk of my long runs totally alone & deep in the mountains. “Alone” except not, bc I spend the entire time talking to God or listening in silence. I appreciate that we can communicate this way, and that He understands my “stillness” manifests in the form of extreme movement. Never gets old.
Psalm 121:1-2 by @ashruns100s

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4 months ago

play stupid games, win stupid prizes 🎲

93 days to change my mind re next bad running decision by @ashruns100s

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4 months ago

Just out here collecting summits instead of breakdowns!!! 🫡 Life hack - everything is easier when you can’t get cell service & nobody can ask you to do anything because you’re 5 miles up a mountain. by @ashruns100s

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6 months ago

soprano c we like to keep it on a high note 🤌😘

Thanking God every single day for the renewed ability to move well, climb high, and live life to the fullest. 🙏🌄 by @ashruns100s

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6 months ago

“Just one more” 100?

I turn 40 this year 🤯 Idk what I thought life would look like around this age.. Maybe I never really believed I’d make it this far? But I’m here and I’m embracing it. Our youngest graduates HS in 2 months, I’m back in school with the goal to get my JD, aaand I am running for school board in the small Georgia town I was raised in. Lots of high quality middle age thrills here, guys! BUT I haven’t succumbed to bird watching… yet. There’s still plenty of questionable decisions left in me - like the fact that I’m signed up for “just one more” 100 mile in September! If I have to get old, yall know I’m gonna full send. by @ashruns100s

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7 months ago

March / April Adventures 👆I FINALLY took the time to completely detach and truly take care of myself. Minimal blue light, no socials, reduced stress, increased nutrients, saying no instead of yes. It worked wonders. Feeling better than ever! A trip to Puerto Rico & 9 different Southern Caribbean islands to celebrate 20 years of marriage helped too. 🥰 Pictured above are some treks - Boiling Lake in Dominica & Mt. Liamuiga in St Kitts. Also pictured, finally taking my best friend up my favorite mountain! A trip well over a decade in the making. (LeConte in the smokies.) Hope you all have a happy weekend! 👋 by @ashruns100s

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a year ago

February adventure ✅ taken in Arizona by @ashruns100s

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2 years ago

I fell in love with running as an adult, right after my 2nd child was born about 17 years ago. I wasn’t good at it initially. It took me a couple years to really find my rhythm. There were many times I wanted to throw in the towel, people doubted me, or I doubted myself. I learned to choose running even when it didn’t choose me though, and it became my go-to coping mechanism for all the bs that popped up in my life.

After many years of that, I started learning how to completely disassociate from pain. I began having breakthroughs in all distances. Just this past year, I went under 19 in the 5k for the first time in my life, breaking my previous time of 19:20 set years prior. But the real beauty of running is that its equally ugly as it is pretty, and I’ve also learned to disassociate from the highs. Like right now I’m on week 12 of little-to-no exercise after some health issues surfaced. I shuffled out a flat and slow 3 miles the other day, and tasted that metallic taste of pain in my mouth. It made me smile…not bc I’m fast, not bc I went far, but bc I know I’ve got to claw my way out of a pit again, and I know that type of fight makes me strong as hell.

In this sport the highs are incredible and the lows suck major, and you just have to be okay with that. There’s times where you won’t have fitness to get out of bed, injuries that wreck your dreams, sucky coaches, derailed progress, vocal doubters, bad races, and no motivation… but you’ll also have days that completely outshine all the bad ones. You’ll have runs that make you feel like Superman, moments that bring you to tears, and finish lines that don’t even feel real.

Recommendation? Detach yourself emotionally from all of it…the up/ down ride. Narrow your focus exclusively on the boring and non glamorous process of pursuing personal excellence —> Chase discipline and consistency, build up the running community, and strive for good character… do that and you’ll find insane stability to ease you through the ebb & flow gracefully. In running and in life. 🙃 by @ashruns100s

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2 years ago

So lately I find myself in a very unique situation. Im 37, and I’m mostly done raising kids. I hate being bored. I was born with infinite energy, and an insatiable desire to be outside at all times. My career is stable. I’ve finally got TIME in my pocket. I had this window mapped out in my life for endless adventuring!! So it only makes sense that NOW my health would begin declining. (Live hard long enough, pay the price I guess?) Apparently, doing my favorite thing —> running stupidly long distances alone in the mountains in high heat <— isn’t conducive to healing a broken body.🧐Weird.

Thankfully though, I inherited this creature from my daughter at just the right time. He’s a 20 pound velociraptor disguised as a mostly blind dog with 5 inch legs and bat ears. She hand selected him from the flea market back in January, but then she felt he was too much work, so I am now his official person. (Same with her elderly pug, bearded dragon with dwarfism, and 2 feral cats “rescued” from my mom’s farm. We aren’t even cat people. #blessed)

Anyway if you don’t know yet, his name is Chubbs. Named after Chubbs from Happy Gilmore.. a fate decided by an Instagram poll… but more importantly, he is now my official hiking accountability partner. 💪

With our mutual limitations of his short legs, limited sight, and my failing kidneys, together we will work to make sure no one goes over the daily adventure limit so I can maybe have a shot at healing. There may be a rogue ultra every now and then, because I’m only human, but for now, Chubbs will be lighting up the trails. And this Instagram feed. Kindest regards & God bless. by @ashruns100s

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2 years ago