I have wanted to sit down and write something for a while about why I started the Badass Women of OCR series. I often find it is hard to write about myself, as where do I start? What do people really need or want to know about me? Having to write something about myself is hard, but I wanted to share a least a little piece of myself.
My Fitness Background
I didn’t come from an athletic background at all. Running and exercising were the bain of my existence, and in high school, I would make every excuse in the book not to run – our teacher used it as punishment instead of explaining to us the benefits and making it fun. Due to this experience with running and exercise, I didn’t really start to work out until my early 20’s at best. It’s kind of funny now when I look at how far I have come and what I have accomplished if you would have told me 17 years ago that I would be deep into the OCR community and by the age of 37 I would have completed two marathons, I would have laughed in your face. My story of not being super fit and active as a teen seems to be common place, it's ironic in a way how many adults find their fit later in life.
How I started working with Mud Run Guide.com as a volunteer article writer.
As babies often do, my daughter Sierra didn’t always sleep through the night. My husband was working evening shift when Sierra was a baby, and I would take her downstairs on our couch on super fussy nights to avoid waking him up. The one night, she finally went to sleep (and any mom knows you do not wake a sleeping baby). I had her sleeping on my chest and was surfing Facebook when I saw a Facebook page for “Mud Run Guide”. Curious, I clicked on the link and was taken to a contest to win one of Brett Stewart’s books. I had never won anything off of Facebook before, so imagine my surprise when I did win. I ended up getting a copy of his book “Ultimate Obstacle Race Training” Crush the World’s toughest courses (to which he still owes me a signature on). I received the book in the mail and started reading through it, and decided I was going to do a Spartan Race (at the time, doing a Tough Mudder scared the ever living crap out of me). I was successful with conquering the Sprint solo (as due to getting lost I had to start by myself and not with my team), and I was hooked to the sport.
I tend to talk a lot and got my husband super excited about the race. The next year, he joined me and the rest is history. We love doing Obstacle Course races together and seem to be inspiring more and more people to jump on board.
I started submitting race reviews to Mud Run Guide and got to know Margaret Schlachter better. I had an idea mulling around in my head and started to contact various athletes on Facebook asking if they would be willing to do an interview with me for Mud Run Guide. Obstacle Course racing can be super intimidating to those that have never done a race, and I wanted to highlight the Badass Women in our sport. I really wanted to present the articles in a straight forward manner and keep things pretty casual and conversational style. Women are a strong force in our OCR community, and I wanted to showcase women in various stages of their OCR careers.
To my surprise, they were all super happy to help, and I am always going to be grateful for Lindsay Webster for being the first person to say yes to my request to write an article on her. I started sending the articles as they were coming into Margaret, and she suggested we turn my interviews into a weekly article series called “The Badass Women of OCR”.
I was beyond the moon happy, as this would give me a chance to showcase powerful and bad as women, and would also help me with my interview skills and self-confidence. To date, I have featured over 20+ women ranging from podium finishers to those behind the scenes making the OCR events we love run smooth. I have no plans of slowing down either – I want to feature as many women in our sport as possible. If even just one person reads my articles and gets inspired, then my mission is accomplished. We all have stories to tell and I feel it is important that I share them.
I also from writing this article series got the courage to start sharing my story. I have a blog, gomommygo.run that I started to put together with race reviews and the like – we all have stories to tell, and I feel that this would be a good outlet. To be honest, this site started off more as an extension of ego more than anything else, but now I want to take it in a different direction. The site needs some love, and being as busy as I am, I haven’t gotten a chance to update it yet.
On a personal note, I have actually had the honor of meeting several of the women interviewed for my articles in real life: Lindsay Webster, Melissa “Sharkbait” Duggan, and Sara Knight to name a few. They are super down to earth and muddy hugs and high fives are the best.
The Future
My husband Ryan and I are quite active in the OCR community. He and I do at least 12 races a year (ranging from OCR to little family fun runs). We also have our little one Sierra who has done her first mud run (at 5 years old), as well as my husband, has two older girls (my step daughters) Brandi and Sam who look like they might be getting into OCR and being more active. Balancing family life, work life, and working out is a challenge these days but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
My long term goal is to continue to feature women in my Badass Women of OCR series, and as well, to continue to provide content that reaches people. I am planning on working with Mud Run Guide for a very long time, and am always open to suggestions for my article series. If you know of anyone that may be a good fit for an article, please let me know.