Moms in Motion

After a quick flight to Santa Barbara this morning I find myself in sunny California to stay with the Hillyers for the weekend. Even though I am supposed to be taking some time off from running, I couldn’t resist the beautiful weather and borrowed the jeep and drove down to run on the beach, just for a little bit.

Terra Hillyer is the coach for a Moms in Motion team here in the city and tonight hosted a fun, delicious dinner for her team of athletes. The purpose of my trip here was to speak to these women about ultrarunning and my experiences in the sport. It was so much fun sharing stories with these ladies and hearing their early feelings on trail running. Most of these women are experiencing trail running for the first time and in listening to their take on the sport it is obvious that they each have the bug. Some are excited for the camaraderie that they have found running with this group and others love being out there, feeling like a kid, tying running and hiking together and having something that is theirs. Hearing these comments makes my heart smile, as these are the reasons I got into the sport and are why I continue to do it.

After a quick slide show about the Grand Slam in 2005, we did an informal question & answer which brought up so many great points about nutrition, hydration, training, bathroom stops and other topics. The founder of Santa Barbara 9 Trails was present and added the point of view from the “early days of ultrarunning” view, where instead of Shot she would buy tubes of frosting.

Tomorrow we will run half of the Santa Barbara 9 Trails race course as a training run. These women are gearing up to either run the entire race (35 miles) on November 25, or to complete the course as part of a relay.