Growing up I only ran to get in shape for team sports and didn't have my first encounter participating in an endurance sport until my senior year of college when my Dad invited me to run my first marathon with him. I barely trained (approx 3 weeks) and it's not something I would ever recommend to anyone. I suffered, experienced a severe sunburn and took 8 years off before returning to racing. Though I started to run more consistently when I took up running again, it was based on no training knowledge and it was still a seasonal activity. This changed after I decided to use marathons as an excuse to travel. Knowing I was spending vacation time to travel to a race was the catalyst for me to read about training and use my first cookie cutter training plan. The plan lead me to finish over an hour faster than any of the previous six marathons and I was hooked. I tried a few other cookie cutter plans the following year but didn't have the same success which is when I heard about TRACER.

I found the concept of TRACER interesting because I don't have the budget to pay for a personal coach but knew I could benefit from a more personalized approach by having the dynamic plan TRACER can offer. I was excited to try TRACER for my first 50 mile ultra but that goal was dashed due to an injury before training started. So, I spent the first half of the year recovering and started to use Max King's marathon program in July once I knew I was ready to race. The program was great in rebuilding my fitness to where it was 2 years prior and I knew it set me up to succeed in my race when the full fatigue from the training hit me during my last long run workout before the taper. I hit my paces during that workout with what felt like a significant amount of accumulated fatigue but the plan still gave me a good taper that had me arriving at the start line feeling fresh. Though I missed my PR by 12 seconds, I ran my most consistent race and for the first time negative split a race. I'm planning to continue to use TRACER for my 3 marathons in the upcoming year and then probably look at one of the ultra programs to get back on the trails in a couple of years.