Where the Tale Began

In November of 2011, I decided to start training for my first marathon. Originally, I was going to enter the New Orleans Rock n Roll Marathon. The week after I was planning on taking my ultimate bucket list trip to Sydney, Australia over my school's spring break.

After calculating costs of travel, and doing some research, I realized it would be very similar, expense wise, to stop in New Zealand and complete a marathon which was scheduled during the first weekend of spring break. So began, 'The Road to New Zealand.' If you have any interest in following my 18 weeks of injury and self doubt, you can read through www.runnewzealand.blogspot.com

If you ever have the chance to do a run with Total Sports, based out of Aukland, New Zealand, I highly recommend it. The organizers are fantastic and the race was just amazing. I'll never forget it. If you are highly dependent on aid stations, then I would not recommend it. This was an extremely rugged, trail run and most of the race was inaccessible to vehicles which made for very few aid stations, four to be exact. But, I carried my own water and did just fine. Only 20 of us ran it, and all of us finished.

From that point forward, I decided to use running as an excuse to travel, but it has become so much more. I do these adventures on my own and I have really discovered more of what I am capable of in the last year and a half than I had since I began college back in 2004. I have shed tears, I have ran through injuries, I've had so much self-doubt, but in the end I always find the will to succeed and finish.

To Finish is to Win.

These are my tales, my adventures and my life.


A view of the town the race started and finished in. Colville, New Zealand
Views from the run. Sea Level, 200M and 400M