- Site: Sarah Lavender Smith
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
This is a book about the therapeutic power of running and becoming a top ultrarunner. But it’s the backstory about her family, and her personal development, that drew me in, even when chapters served as a sometimes-painful mirror of self-reflection.
- Site: UltraRunning Magazine
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
As I considered the apples-to-oranges comparison between road marathons and mountain ultras, I wondered. What if, instead of trying to be the marathon runner I used to be, I embraced the tougher, heavier, more truck-like ultrarunner I’ve become?
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- Featured
- Site: Sarah Lavender Smith
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
OK, so maybe I’m all by myself in a high-desert forest running 56 miles in a giant circle for no better reason than to order a pizza at the end, but at times out there, it feels purposeful and connected to something larger, like …. like … oh Christ I don’t know. Are you there, […]
- Site: Sarah Lavender Smith
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
I’m doing this race again less as an endurance competition, more as an opportunity to revisit and revere this region up close, and ultimately do what I can to help protect it.
- Site: Sarah Lavender Smith
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
Why I’m thinking about parties, ropes and chainsaws—and what they have to do with procrastination, running, parenting and aging.
- Site: UltraRunning Magazine
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
A decade ago, at 42, Kami Semick reached the pinnacle of ultrarunning. She won every race she entered in 2009, including two world championship events in the 100K and 50K, and earned UltraRunning’s Ultrarunner of the Year title for the second year in a row. But five years later, she called it quits and disappeared from the sport.
- Site: Sarah Lavender Smith
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
The farther away I got from road marathoning and that PR set in 2009, the more intimidating and daunting it felt to try it again.
- Site: Sarah Lavender Smith
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
I made a mental list of circumstances that make a long training run extra challenging. What happens when all these things conspire on the same run? Let me tell you.
- Site: Sarah Lavender Smith
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
A flashback sparks excitement for training and racing 20 years later. Here’s my lineup for 2019.
- Site: Sarah Lavender Smith
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
To breathe deeply, to see the horizon clearly, to talk to old friends, to move your legs up and down a mountain—how marvelous and precious this life on earth is, the more imperiled it becomes.
- Site: UltraRunning Magazine
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
In this era of 200-is-the-new-100, it feels almost inevitable that many runners and race directors will super-size perfectly good and satisfying ultra routes, and we ultrarunners will feel compelled to choose the longer option or feel slightly guilty or less accomplished if we take the shorter route.
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- Site: Sarah Lavender Smith
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
No, our dog is not part of this gear/gift guide, but something in that photo is! This time of year, I like to share recommendations for worthwhile running- and outdoor-related stuff I discovered over the past 12 months.
- Site: Sarah Lavender Smith
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
I wanna run and feel like I did in that photo from 2015. I can’t recall a time I felt this degree of ambivalence about running, which is supposed to be my passion. Perhaps I’m fitting the profile of burnout, but burnout usually follows overtraining, and since September I’ve been undertraining.
- Site: Sarah Lavender Smith
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
Because I face the move back to California and some big decisions about our home, I am mulling, “What next? What will I do after I turn 50?” To plan ahead, first I look back and reflect. I reminisce about life one decade ago…
- Site: UltraRunning Magazine
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
The sound of a helicopter circling over our property near Telluride, Colorado, filled my ears for several days straight. The sight of teams of volunteers dressed in hiking gear, fanning out in the aspen groves and bushwhacking off trail while shouting, “Tim,” pulled at my heart.
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- Site: Sarah Lavender Smith
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
As soon as I saw Morgan and Clare, I said wild-eyed, “I may blow up, but those were the best 27 miles of my life.”
- Site: Sarah Lavender Smith
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
I decided to turn my sour grapes into fortified grape juice and attempt an upstart, scrappy race the weekend after Hardrock 100, on the same mountain range, that’s arguably even more difficult—a race so miserable in its first year on the current route that the RD admits, “I don’t think it was a good experience […]
- Site: Sarah Lavender Smith
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
“For these three days,” I told the group gathered for our inaugural San Juan Mountain Running Camp, “I want you to encounter and experience challenges on the trail that you don’t expect, and that perhaps intimidate you, because you’ll discover that you can get through and handle more than you think you can. And you’ll […]
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- Destinations Training & Racing Allison Snyder Featured hardrock 100 Hardrock Hundred Endurance Run Highline Running Adventures mountain running ophir Opus Hut running camp San Juan Mountain Running Camp sarah lavender smith summer adventure Trail Running trail running camp ultrarunning where to run near Ouray where to run near Telluride
- Site: Sarah Lavender Smith
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
This is has become my life, my domestic ultra. If someone asks what I do, I probably should embrace the old-fashioned term “homemaker,” because that’s my main purpose now: building and making a home, and in the process, circling back to the summertimes I savored as a kid.
- Site: Sarah Lavender Smith
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
To me, an ideal getaway is not an island resort or a spa weekend. It’s a running camp in a mountain environment. These totally worthwhile experiences at trail-running camps heighten my excitement to launch a new mountain-running camp just one month from now.
- Site: Sarah Lavender Smith
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
I’m getting passed by masses of midpackers. It shouldn’t bother me, but it does….
- Site: Sarah Lavender Smith
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
Six tips for recovering from a running injury and being less stubborn or shortsighted than I was during the past month.
- Site: Sarah Lavender Smith
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
I’m writing this partly as a reminder never to take exultant, elevated, healthy highs for granted, because you just may fall on your ass.
- Site: Sarah Lavender Smith
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
A camp, a house, a horse, a race and some kids. These are big pieces fitting into the puzzle of my life this year.
- Site: UltraRunning Magazine
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
Barely past the halfway point of Run Rabbit Run 100 last September, my legs and feet rebelled. Stiff muscles, achy joints and soles so tender that I winced with each step conspired to abort yet another attempt to run. Dejectedly hiking in the fading light of dusk on a gentle stretch of trail above Steamboat Springs, I said to my pacer, Jacob Kaplan-Moss, “Sorry, this is all I can manage right now.”
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- Featured Training and Racing
- Site: Sarah Lavender Smith
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
When I feel overwhelmed, or try to help my kids deal with their stress, I draw on lessons learned and strategies developed through ultras.
- Site: Sarah Lavender Smith
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
I need to sort out thoughts about the coming year and beyond, and that’s another reason I’m looking forward to this 24-hour hamster-wheel ultra on new year’s eve—it’ll be a retreat of sorts.
- Site: Sarah Lavender Smith
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
Like the “super moon,” the course seemed unusually brilliant and exaggerated in its beauty. Little did I know on that blissful, escapist day that disaster would strike 36 hours later.
- Site: Sarah Lavender Smith
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
I wrote this post four years ago, in the fall of 2013, and am updating it since I revisited this cool urban run last week. Now that the entrance to Yerba Buena Island is open and links to Treasure Island, you can loop around there for a longer run!
- Site: Sarah Lavender Smith
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
A roundup of nifty products I discovered and used this year to better enjoy running and the outdoors.
- Site: Sarah Lavender Smith
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
I need to let go of longing for a supposedly better version of myself from years ago. Remember and celebrate all the things that this 2017 version of me did that the 2007 person couldn’t fathom.
- Site: Sarah Lavender Smith
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
The summer, I read about the West to deepen my understanding of Colorado, California and states in between—their history, culture, politics and myriad pressures. Rest assured, these books are good reads.
- Site: Sarah Lavender Smith
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
I spent ten months coaching two clients for the Grand to Grand Ultra and the Atacama Crossing. Here’s the outline of their training plans, and their stories of what the events were like, to show how to meet the myriad challenges of an ultra-long stage race—and, perhaps, to inspire your new year’s goals.
- Site: Sarah Lavender Smith
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
After several mornings in a row under the covers with that novel, it hit me: This is what post-100-mile-ultra, midlife, empty-nesting transition feels like.
- Site: Sarah Lavender Smith
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
I hated the logic that I wanted to cover 100 miles so I could be done with 100 miles because I didn’t actually want to do the full 100 miles. Ugh, none of it made any sense.
- Site: Sarah Lavender Smith
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
The person who trained assiduously, whose every workout had a purpose and goal attained, who meticulously planned every piece of gear—that seems like another person, and she’s not here now.
- Site: Sarah Lavender Smith
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
A tribute to a trio of relatives—my grandmother, grandfather and great-uncle—who challenged themselves in the San Juan Mountains in mind-blowing ways that inspire me as a mountain runner.
- Site: Sarah Lavender Smith
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
Words of wisdom from a panel discussion, plus some of my thoughts on this year’s Hardrock and its female field.
- Site: Sarah Lavender Smith
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
I can’t recall how or why we started the new year with the “see ya Tuesday at 9 at the lake”—two ultra-distance trail runners meeting midweek for a paved, flat, easy loop. I needed a friend, a counselor, a reminder of the best, most humorous and resilient sides of the human spirit. Each Tuesday, we […]
- Site: Sarah Lavender Smith
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
Perhaps my fondest memory of the Mauna to Mauna Ultra was the experience of the oxymoronic “friendly competition” in the best, truest sense.
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- Grand to Grand Ultra Training & Racing Big Island Running destination-oriented running fastpacking Featured Mauna to Mauna Ultra race report multi-day stage racing runner's packing list sarah lavender smith self-supported stage race Trail Running ultramarathon ultrarunning where to run on Hawaii
- Site: Sarah Lavender Smith
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
It behooves competitors to carry as little as possible, because every pound of weight slows us down and saps energy. But, given the climate and terrain variability, I can’t go too light or get too hungry.
- Site: Sarah Lavender Smith
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
It’s taper time, so I reflect on peak training for the Mauna to Mauna Ultra and share an exciting update about Free to Run.
- Site: Sarah Lavender Smith
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
“In this sport, there’s so much seriousness, so to see some fun is awesome.” I talked with Jamil Coury, Schuyler Hall and Michael Carson about how they blend comedy and ultrarunning for their YouTube channel.
- Site: Sarah Lavender Smith
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
Peak training involves increasing your training load and preparing very specifically for the conditions of your race. For multi-day, self-supported stage races, the preparation becomes more complex.
- Site: Sarah Lavender Smith
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
The book explores the “why” as well as the “how” of becoming a trail runner and graduating to ultras. It goes beyond showing how to achieve better trail-running performance. The chapters also convey the culture and ethos of the sport, and spotlight many notable characters in it.
- Site: Sarah Lavender Smith
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
Two clients nailed their races at the Way Too Cool 50K and the Napa Valley Marathon, in spite of a short training period of about two months. Subtle but important changes to their weekly routines and race-day plans made big differences and might help you, too.
- Site: Sarah Lavender Smith
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
Please learn about and support my campaign for Free to Run. Let’s help change parts of the world where women sorely need not just athletics, but basic rights and education, by using the power of running and recreational sports to bridge divides.
- Site: Sarah Lavender Smith
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
Thoughts & tips on running Central Park, plus recommendations on where to stay, eat and go based on our family vacation. (Original post from 2012 updated with new restaurant and hotel recommendations from 2017, and snow pics!)
- Site: Sarah Lavender Smith
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
At the starting line, do you say it’s “just a training run”? Here’s how to use a race as an effective, deliberate training run to help fulfill a longer-term race goal.
- Site: Sarah Lavender Smith
- Author: Sarah Lavender Smith
How can you follow the news in our niche without cutting into the time you should spend running? In this post, I share how I do it.