Welcome to my blog! A little about me… I’ve always been fairly athletic and loved playing sports (watching is a different story… unless it’s a track meet or some type of running event). Growing up I played every sport I could and eventually found track in middle school and immediately fell in love.

From middle school through college, anything over 400 meters seemed much too far to run, though I did run cross country in high school my first three years. I had a successful sprinting/hurdling career during that time achieving school records and qualifying for the State meet the NCAA DII national meet. After graduating with a Bachelor's degree in Health and Human Performance from Fort Hays State University in 2012 and no longer having a coach expecting me to show up for practice daily, I had to figure out what was next for myself.

I turned to distance running in the summer of 2012 mostly to keep health and fitness as a large part of my life as I worked towards my personal training certification. I didn't realize I'd become hooked to distance running while training for my first half marathon in spring of 2013! Since then, I have successfully completed multiple 5ks, over 20 half marathons, 4 full marathons, two Half Ironman triathlons and one Full Ironman triathlon. In these accomplishments I've also raced in 19 states and qualified for (and ran) the Boston Marathon.

Now that the Boston Marathon has passed, I plan to continue learning how to run as a new mom and build my fitness back to my previous abilities. I have a goal of running a half marathon in all 50 states, as well as running all six World Marathon Majors.

I’ll write up a short race recap of all my races over half marathon distance for you to follow along on my journey. They will also post chronologically right here on this blog. I plan to eventually post other tips and tricks, recipes, and the “whys” of distance running. I hope you enjoy!

I picked the Grand Island Trail Half Marathon in Michigan simply because it looked and sounded beautiful. I'd never ran a trail race and really all I knew was that I should expect it to be a bit more challenging and I'd run slower. I knew we'd have about a 5 hour drive from Milwaukee on Friday night to get up to Munising where packet pick up and our hotel were located. What I did not know was that we'd lose an hour of driving time... silly me! Packet pick-up ended at 9 pm, so leaving at 3 was already going to make that trip tight. Then there was road construction, stopping for gas and food, and GPS going out when we got to this beautiful but scary deserted windy road in a state park... during a rain storm.

We arrived to packet pickup with 10 minutes to spare. Ten minutes! It was a very small packet pick-up with only one or two vendor booths. We went straight to the hotel knowing the next morning would be early. We had to be up to catch the bus to the boat to be shuttled over Lake Superior to Grand island. It was about a 10 minute bus ride and 20 minute boat ride to the island.

Beautiful morning for a race! Being shuttled across Lake Superior from Munising to Grand Island.

Once on Grand Island, Thayne and I walked around a bit before hiding in the welcome center from the mosquitos and rain. As the start time loomed closer, I went to grab my anklet that would keep track of my time as I ran over the timing mats and made sure my water bottle was full. This race series is a "green" race where every runner has to carry their own water system. There are aid stations, but no cups! You would have to stop and refill your bottle or pack from a large cooler. Right before the race started, the race director came forward to have the national anthem played, make usual announcements and to let us know that this half marathon is actually 13.35 miles! "But trail runners don't care about distances, right?" Well, I'm glad I knew it was long going in!

Before the start of the race! Ready to go.

Race start! I'm in the blue tank and hot orange shorts.

The race started on a nice hard packed dirt trail before turning into a gravel road. Even though Grand Island is a national park, there are a few homes allowed. We followed the road past a small body of water called Duck Pond which led to a heavily forested area for about a mile. After that mile we had beautiful views, but had to run on the beach! The beach was very thin making passing anyone nearly impossible especially if you didn't want to run in deep sand or get your feet wet in Trout Bay. This was a very tough mile, but the view made up for it!
Right after this mile, when your legs are heavy from sand running, you have the only hill in the race. But this hill was more like a very rocky mountain! I walked up part of it and was not alone in doing so. This led us inland where the race was heavily forested from there on out.From about mile 9 to the finish we were still running in the forest, on single track trails, flattened grass or soft packed mulch trails. Again, the views were beautiful as we were atop the island slowly losing elevation but able to see Lake Superior to our right the entire time.

Coming around the last corner to the finish.

The finish line was hard to see until the last 200 meters, but you could hear the announcer from about a mile away. What a tease!

Thayne was not able to track me through the race at all, and couldn't get around to other areas of the island to watch so it's definitely not a spectator friendly race. After meeting back up with him at the finish he said he heard other spectators mentioning that they saw bears! I'm not sure what I'd have done if I'd have seen one while racing... keep running I guess!

The finishers medals were beautiful! They were hand carved by a local artist. After receiving mine, I got my official results and saw that I was 2nd in my age group! This meant I could turn in my wooden medal for a hand blown glass medal instead!

My official finish time was 1:58:23 (8:51 avg) for the 13.35 miles. Not too bad!

This was an absolutely beautiful course that also offered a full marathon and 50k for anyone looking for longer races. The weather, while humid, was nice and cool making it a great summer race in mid July. Munising also has a lot to offer as a small town in Michigan. I'd definitely suggest this race if you're looking for something unique.

After the race with my hand blown glass medal. Still my favorite medal!

Michigan was state five, half marathon number 6. We're getting there!

To go back to the race report archives, click here.