Susan Donnelly

January 22, 2011 Before I was racing so often, I still put in the same mileage, if not more.  Every Sunday saw a 30-mile run, or at least every weekend I wasn’t racing or tapering.  Most of these were good days but some were a struggle.  The funny thing is that the struggles that didn’t [...]

January 15, 2011 I didn’t feel like I should be going.  I’d just been to Arizona and Florida and this seemed, well…more sinfully extravagant than I deserved.  Kind of like playing hooky.  I mean, California?  For the weekend??? I got the plane ticket but still couldn’t picture myself there – something was going to happen [...]

January 9, 2010 This run would normally be routine.  I’ve run it a couple of times before and like any good Fat Ass race, this one’s low key and fun – really more of a way to get some miles in together than anything else.  No big deal. But two things were notably different this [...]

December 31, 2010 – January 1, 2011 It all started with an itch to try some new events.  I was scanning the Ultrarunning Magazine calendar for interesting races I’ve never run, and bingo!  There was one listed on New Year’s weekend, right where my sister Karen lives.  About a month earlier, Nikki Seger had e-mailed [...]

For me, the winter holiday season is one of the best times for me to relax and recharge.  There aren’t many races and best of all, there are enough holidays on the work schedule that I can manage a week plus away. So I spent the time exactly where I wanted to – with my [...]

December 5, 2010 As odd as it sounds, my world and the world my local running friends inhabit rarely combine like this.  Certainly not this beautifully. For this feat, Tracy Lee gets all the credit.  She signed up even before I did as the perfect way to celebrate her milestone 40th birthday that same week.  [...]

November 6, 2010 It can’t possibly be this cold.  It’s totally unnecessary.  Ugh.  But it certainly gives an easy race a challenging twist and keeps it from being routine.  As much as I am really, really not ready for cold weather, steeling myself for these icy temps and thinking through the complications they bring, ups [...]

October 23-24, 2010 It’s a tight turnaround but the weekend after directing the Cumberland Trail 50k, Rob and I fly out to Phoenix to run Javelina 100.  This is a pretty fun race and a nice change of scenery but the main reason for running it is to see my parents and share what I [...]

October 15, 2010 When you’re putting a lot of effort (and missing a lot of runs) into a project like a race, you inevitably ask yourself many times along the way why you’re doing it.  This year, I got tired of reminding myself of the answer and wrote it down: Give runners a remote, wild [...]

Last year, I missed this race because I went instead to a memorial service.  This year, the race happened between two memorial services. Even near race day, I didn’t know it would happen this way.  Monday before the race, a friend I had worked with years ago died suddenly from a stroke.  This is a [...]