Runs With Mascara: What a Surprise!

Sunday, September 4, 2011

What a Surprise!

A shirt we saw in Vail after day 5. Us going into TransRockies? Nah!

Hey there, Dana here. I can't believe it has been so long since TransRockies and I haven't posted a thing. Sam did a great job posting the highlights which I share so I will post the surprises, at least surprises to me.

1. We were racing. Yes, I know we signed up for this thing and knew the whole time it was a race. Thing was, I thought it would be a race against the race, against the elevation, against the distance and it truly was all that. BUT! It was also a race against other teams that seemed to be nearby all the time. To put it in perspective, Sam and I had a total run time of 28 hours and 19 minutes. That put us in 6th place. 10th place was only 30 minutes back at 28:48. That means there were 5 places within 30 minutes of each other or just 5 minutes per day. To be more specific most days on the uphills the order of the racers was Sam, all our competitors, me at the bottom, the caboose. Luckily I could cruise the downhills.

2. Sam is an animal. Okay this is actually not surprising, at all. In fact, if you know her you know what an amazing athlete she is but seriously she went to the next level on this race and pushed through blisters and feet that look like she was in the civil war. We also got along insanely well, again, not a surprise that we would get a long but we did FANTASTIC. (She did ask me to marry her in a fit of happiness upon seeing our hotel room on the last day, don't worry gents, Sam is still on the market).

Goofing off post-race.

3. That was luxury. I never felt like I was roughing it at all. The food was amazing. The tents, the help, the people, the support. I can't say enough amazing things about how well organized this race was.

4. Getting back to real life is hard. I am glad to have a race coming up as I definitely need something to focus on. Getting back to working out was fine. Going to work brought me almost instantly to tears as it is about as opposite as you can go from a week running in Colorado to email,desk,work, UGH. Anyone want to pay me to have fun sporting adventures for them? Happy to do it!

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About Runs with Mascara

Who is Team Runs with Mascara?

Runs with Mascara is Dana Katz and Samantha Pinney - training partners and friends for the past 3 years; adventurers with a flair for musicals and running skirts, and a generous respect for looking good when sweating hard. While they’ve had many adventures across the West, one of their more epic spans was a week they spent racing from the Bizz Johnson trail marathon in northern California to rappeling in Arches National Park, to biking the White Rim Trail in southern Utah to running the Moab Half Marathon. This is their first race endeavor as a team under the name RWM.

Samantha Pinney overcame the malls of her New Jersey youth for an obsession with the outdoors that carries her from skiing to ultra running to outrigger canoeing and whatever adventures she can find. She can’t imagine life without running skirts, flip flops or beanies and wields a kettle ball as deftly as she does a mascara wand. She competed in the 2010 Crossfit Team Games, has multiple top 10 finishes to her name but can’t throw a softball to save her life. She’d like to be a better surfer.

Dana Katz is a recovering triathlete and cyclocross racer turned ultrarunner. She eats hills for breakfast that she doctors with homemade concoctions of flaxseed and ginger granola in her ongoing quest to create ridiculously healthy and delicious meals. Dana is a globetrotter who in a recent span ran a ½ marathon in Brazil, a trail run in Sweden, a marathon in northern California and a harried loop amongst the monuments of Washington D.C. before boarding a plane. She doesn’t leave home without her running skirt and snacks. Don’t let Dana’s easy-going, amicable personality fool you: she trains like a warrior and competes with a vengeance.