Susan Donnelly

April 9, 2010:  Zumbro Bottoms State Forest Recreation Area We flew into Madison, Wisconsin, this year and as the plane descended through a thick layer of clouds, the city slowly materialized in view through snow flying by the window.  Snow – oh no!  The roofs below were white with it and of course we didn’t [...]

March 20, 2010.  Birmingham, Alabama… What Is It About This Race??? Okay. Last year, two hours into a four and a half hour drive, my trusty Subaru blew a hose in Chattanooga and I waited hours to get it towed back home (thank goodness for AAA!).  En route, the tow truck driver dropped me off [...]

As we were driving toward the campground the night before the race, the sign on a church outside Batesville, Arkansas, preached “You can’t walk with the Lord and run with the Devil.” Yikes!  Was this meant for ultrarunners??? What’s A Stage Race? A stage race is a set of races over several consecutive days.  At [...]

“Where are you going this time?” “Lake Okeechobee, in Florida.” (Blank look) “You know, when you look at a map of Florida, there’s a huge blue circle in the middle?” That’s Lake Okeechobee.” (Blank look) “I’m running around that circle…it’s 118 miles,” (helpfully drawing a circle in the air) (Confused look) “My sister works on [...]

First of all, I’m fine, it (thankfully) wasn’t a big impact.  But as uber-careful as I am, it caught me completely off guard. Here’s the story.  I run to work a couple of times a week as a dependable way to shoehorn a run into my day (who actually wants to sleep at the office?), [...]

Ultrarunner…college basketball player…mountain climber…pediatric nurse volunteering her time in the West Bank and Haiti…cancer survivor… It’s impossible to wrap anyone up in a tidy list of labels, much less a person living life this full and with this much courage.  Read this article on UTLadyVols.com to see why my friend Liza inspires me!

This winter is remarkably cold, remarkably snowy and lately – oppressively dark and gloomy. With a string of warm winters here in east Tennessee, this one’s been hard to accept, much less cope with.  The bravado of December evaporated immediately after New Year’s.  The last threads cold weather denial unravelled when the calendar flipped to [...]

Race morning.  First thing, Rob walks over to the hotel window, peers outside, and laughs.  Uh-oh. Sure enough, there’s at least two inches of snow on the cars and the hotel flags are horizontal in the wind.  Which among other things probably means the rest of the forecast will be right – highs around 30 [...]

It snowed in grand style this weekend, at least what’s considered “grand” for my part of Tennessee.  We just don’t get snow much anymore so it’s hard to resist running out to play in it. There weren’t many incentives to drive anywhere in what surely must be a traffic nightmare and since my one-in-a-million local [...]

Love is our true destiny.  We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone – we find it with another. ~ Thomas Merton Three years ago, I was signed up for Mt. Mist 50k but didn’t start.  In fact, I didn’t even drive to Huntsville.  I was here at home and the decision [...]