2015 has come and gone... and so has the first month of 2016!

I guess it's time to finally post a year in review.

At the beginning of 2015, I decided on three main goals for the year: my first 50 miler, ENDURrun, and a fall marathon. Here's how they went.

50 Mile
My first 50 miler. Rock the Ridge in New Paltz, NY.
It went better than I could ever imagine.  I headed into it with an "A" goal of 7:45, thinking that would only happen if all the stars aligned... but I somehow managed to finish in 7:39:24, taking 2nd place female!

I truly enjoyed this race and was running with a smile on my face through most of the race.

ENDURrun
Three weeks before ENDURrun, I stupidly jumped my weekly mileage up by 20 miles. I new it was a dumb idea, but mentally, I felt like I needed to have a 70+ mile week. I hated how low my mileage was in June and July and I needed a confidence boost.... a confidence boost and a sore ball of the foot. Whoops. Turns out I sprained my second toe on my left foot.

So.... needless to say, this event did not go as well as it did the year before. The foot was mostly OK, but it acted up on a few of the stages. I did manage to run a faster 15K (stage 2) and 30K (stage 3) and felt fantastic during those stages. I almost dropped out of the race during stage 5 when I was in pain for the first two laps of the 5 lap course. I told myself that if it still hurt at the end of lap 3, I was out. But... the pain went away and I actually enjoyed the last 3 loops of this course. I saw my chiropractor immediately after this stage. She gave me a mini lecture, telling me again to STOP WEARING FLIP FLOPS (not while running of course.. haha.. but post race, and just walking around, etc) but also told me to finish ENDURrun since there were only two stages left, This time I listened. Too bad I love flip flops. I miss them. I used to live in them as much as possible.
So back to the event... I ended up finishing the week in a very similar time to my 2013 result, which I was fine with. This year... this year it will be much better. :)

I wrote about each stage as they happened. These recaps can be found here: August posts.

Fall Marathon
In October, I ran the County Marathon. I won't go into details, since I wrote all about the race here.
I went into the race with a goal time of sub 3:30 and finished in a net time of 3:27:52, a PB by almost four and a half minutes. I was definitely happy with how this race went.


Some other races happened as well.. and they went mostly well.
Below is a list of all races I raced or participated in during 2015 and my results.

January
- Frosty Trail 6 hour (as a training run) - 52.5 km, 2nd female.

February
- Re-Fridgee-Eighter 8 Mile - 59:55 - 5th female.

March
- Around the Bay 30K - 2:22:07 - 111th female.

April
- Marden Half Marathon - 1:39:24 - 5th female.

May
- Rock the Ridge 50 Mile - 7:39:27 - 2nd female.
- Seaway Run 4 Jump 5K - 21:41 - 1st female

June
- Niagara-on-the-Lake 50K - 4:26:45 - 5th female.

July
- The Limberlost Challenge 28K - 3:16:09 - 6th female.
- Dirty Dash 8K  - 42:06 - 2nd female.
- Downtown Kitchener Mile - 6:26 - 5th female.
- Health & Performance 2.2K - 9:21 - 13th female.

August
- ENDURrun - 15:12:56 - 8th female

September
- Harvest Half (ran as a marathon race pace workout) - 1:45:57 - 10th female.
- Laurier Loop 10K (ran as a progression run workout) - 49:49 - 6th female.

October
- The County Marathon - 3:27:52 - 5th female
- Oktoberfest 5K - 21:16 - 13th female.

November
- REMEMBERrun 11K - 51:18 - 3rd female.

December
- Santa Pur-Suit 5K - 22:08 - 6th female.

So there you have it, 2015. There have been lessons learned. Now to put those lessons to use and come out with a fantastic 2016! My first race of the year will be the Re-Fridgee-Eighter 8 mile, which is coming up soon in just 2 weeks. Wish me luck!