Changes in Latitudes

June 11th I ran my second trail race in Lillehammer. The first being EcoTrail Oslo in May. This race was really fun, even though I could not have music to keep me going. Trail running makes me have to focus on my form and where I step, so the race really felt like it went by really fast since it was so refreshing running through the woods. Marius and I drove over on Friday night, and thanks to how long the day is, we had beautiful views the whole drive. Due to a rock slide we had to take a detour that added an hour onto our drive, but it turned out to be very fun. There were lots of sheep wandering around the roads giving us a good laugh, and trying to squeeze around corners with cars coming in the opposite direction kept us awake. We got to the cabin at 2:30AM and went straight to bed. Lambs crossing the road on our detour Lucky for me, I didn't have to start running til 1PM on Saturday. The weather was perfect for running. Not too much sun and a nice breeze. I d...

March 29th was the half-marathon in Madrid that I got from Marius for Christmas. It was my fourth half-marathon and I trained a solid 15 weeks to earn a new personal record. Prior to this race, my personal record was 1:47, set in Lisbon in March 2013...I was around 30 seconds shy last year when I ran in Bergen coming in at 1:48 - I forgot the exact seconds. We had a few days in Madrid before the race, but I will write about those later when I can get the pictures from Marius' camera. The course looped the northern part of the city and finished in a very nice park. There were nearly 17,000 runners, and I definitely blended in with the crowd. Marius was much easier to spot with his blond hair. Even though I wore my American flag shorts, there were so many people that it would have been difficult for Marius to spot me through the crowd. So I encouraged him to do his workout and keep an eye out for me at 10:45am.  The course was not flat, like I had thought it would be. Rathe...