the origin story you definitely didn’t ask for
My relationship with distance running began in 2010 when I battled my arch nemesis in a 6th grade gym class mile in order to win over the heart of our shared crush. Unfortunately, I had miscalculated the attractiveness of running so hard you throw up and have to sit in the nurse’s office the rest of the day.
Despite not yielding me a boyfriend, that race did grant me a letter from the middle school cross country coach encouraging me to join the team. I had tried a few team sports growing up, but none stuck. I decided to show up to practice.
I fell in love with the sport and a mere two years later was on a competitive high school distance running team. In many ways, I got lucky that the only high school in my hometown was pretty good at distance running. At the time, Yorkville, Illinois had about 16,000 people and was still clinging onto its’ rural roots. The head coach, Coach Muth, had a vision for the team that would transcend its’ humble beginnings.
The women’s team won the Illinois 2A state cross country meet 5 years in a row from 2011 – 2015. In 2015 and 2016 we sent athletes to the Arcadia Invitational in Southern California. In 2017, a year after I graduated, the women’s team made Nike Nationals. I was what one would say “top of the bell curve” on the varsity team, but it was all the same a life-changing experience.
Reflecting back — we trained very hard. Six, seven days per week not including lifting practice. Workouts that were surely at race effort on a regular basis. As I understand it now, our recovery days were certainly not at a proper recovery pace either. The one and only training element we took easy had to be hills. We would walk both up and down the “Main Street hill” and thanks to Strava, I now know this was 37ft of gain over about 0.1 miles.
After high school, I was fortunate enough to walk onto the University of Illinois’ Cross Country and Track and Field programs and was instantly the slowest or second slowest runner on the team. I put a lot of pressure on myself to get better, worked really hard, got better, but in tandem was also very stressed, lost weight, and battled disordered eating. I was not happy.
My boyfriend was on the Illinois Cross Country Club Team and I had seen glimpses into how its members struck such a balance between training, school, and being a traditional college student at a BIG 10 university. After one year on the varsity team, I decided to leave the team and see what the club team was all about for myself.
The team was everything I could have dreamed of and more. It was well run (entirely by students), fun, light-hearted, still with highly-dedicated high-caliber athletes. Practice became stress relief–my daily dose of shenanigans. As I reflect now, this was a pivotal decision in my life, and had I not made it, I expect my life would look dramatically different.
Okay okay but when will this stop being sappy and connect to trail running? The University of Illinois is still painstakingly flat.
Not to be an annoying project manager but I can actually point to the critical path of my introduction to trail running. It goes something like this:
- Joined Illinois Cross Country and Track Club
- Met friends Quinn Todzo, Emma Burkhardt, Ryan Somerfield (keystone members of said team)
- Quinn (who was woking at Lanagan Engineering in San Francisco) put in an internal recommendation to support my application for an internship at Langan
- I got the job and sublet a room in Berkeley with Quinn, Ryan, and Emma for the summer
- Specifically Quinn and Emma drag my ass to the trails and I complain about the hills a lot (remember the Main Street hill?)
So here we are. Hundreds of miles later and thousands of feel of vert (almost 200,000ft in 2025), trail running is my favorite form of running and I am no longer a big whiny baby about hills.
For me, trail running is playful and light-hearted, something I’ve learned to seek and admire. It ignites my sense of adventure, something I didn’t fully realize I had until moving to California. At the end of the day, what better way to spend time than climbing mountains, frolicking in fields, and pooping in the woods with your friends?
trail projects 