The clocks have changed, and the air is crisp. Soon snow will (hopefully) blanket the ground. That means St Croix 40 will soon be upon us, and we can’t make it happen without your help! We&#8…

This morning I opt’d for a walk over at Elm Creek. It’s been a long summer with lots of travel, running, biking, and generally living life to its fullest. But even the joy that comes with living adventures doesn't happen without demanding sacrifice. Over this summer I’ve traveled close to 8,000 miles for running, biking, work, and pleasure. That’s a lot of steering wheel time.

This weekend I’m pacing and crewing a friend of mine at a 100 mile race out of state, and as luck would have it, I was reminded that 6 years ago I completed my first (and only so far) 100 mile race. It got me thinking about how many races I’ve run over the years, and what the stat breakdown looks like.

A couple weeks ago I needed to be in Boston for a big public transportation conference for work. I'm not a huge fan of flying, I'll do it if I need to, but it's not my favorite way to get places. I'll often plan longer driving trips just so that I can see the countryside, experience the cities I'm passing through, and generally feel like I'm living life to the fullest.

I was never a Boy Scout, but Mike was and a few years ago he heard about a new trail race starting up on the site of the Philmont High Adventure camp. He had been there a few times as both a youth and a troop leader and was excited to experience the place as a trail runner. Fast forward to 2025 and Mike and Beth both decided to head out to attempt the 50 miler after having conquered the 26 mile marathon in the first year of the event.

It takes a lifetime to find The life like the life you had in mind - Trampled by Turtles PC: Beth We all awoke early on our last day, even our birthday girl. When we were putting together this plan there was a happy coincidence that we’d be waking up on Beth Lake on Beth’s actual birthday, and now the day had arrived, and soon the end of our voyage would be upon us.

I awoke groggily on day 3 to the final sounds of rain on the tent fly. The lightning had abated and left us with a pleasant night of rain that helped lull me into a deep slumber. Eventually though the bladder decided that it was time to see what the storm had left us with and so I meandered out and off to the latrine.

I awoke bright and early on day 2 after having a really restful night of sleep. The sun was shining and the lake was mostly calm. I began the morning with a little breakfast of oatmeal with granola and chocolate chips and proceeded to wander around the island to see what I could see. PC: Lisa Eventually everyone was up and ready for the day and we started packing to begin our journey.

We got to spend a nice quiet night in the Sawbill Lake campground before our shuttle the next morning. We awoke early, with the sun, and started packing up our things into our new rental portage packs. The portage packs were WAY bigger than we had anticipated and so we were able rearrange gear in whatever fashion we wanted. Since most of our time is spent in the canoe, the packs are designed to just be big rectangular bags for whatever we can stuff in there.

Growing up in Minnesota you would always hear about people taking trips to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) in northern Minnesota. Even the church I grew up in would do a yearly men’s trip up there to fish and camp for a week. However, I was a nerdy little kid who preferred books and computers to being outdoors and so I tended to avoid those types of activities growing up.