This year I run the IRONBULL Ultra Trail to mark the profound distance I have traveled between one year and the last in terms of human experience after the death of my husband, Corey Wilcox (also a Wausau native like me), on August 16 at age 45 from aggressive pancreatic cancer, 122 days after his diagnosis. You can read more about Corey’s courage and his beautiful life on our CaringBridge.  I run to honor his spirit as someone who “Found Their Tough,” and I run to celebrate the breath I still have in my lungs and my legs beneath me as I rise to meet life’s challenges, one more time.  I also run for the love of my hometown, and the mountain I shot my first deer on, climbed as a child, went to sunrise Easter services at, and whose observation tower I summited on New Year’s Eve one year. The mountain has a thousand faces ( I can see skiers on her slopes from the windows of my childhood home), and she has been a steadfast companion to me all the years of the journey of my life. Come rain, shine, fog, mud, perfection (we can hope!)  or whatever the conditions of the day, we will meet again and I will learn from what is given to me on October 1, 2022.

I am motivated by peak experiences, and by the beauty that is revealed deep within those.  The moments in a run or a race when ordinary time disappears and there is something far greater than me thinking about me and my time or the pebble in my right shoe or my sticky gel hands that is making its presence known.  Last year at the IRONBULL Ultra Trail, it was watching the fog filter the sunlight through the pines on the south side trails. I felt alive from head to toe as if I too were filled by fog and light, and I was so grateful for my life in that vibrating-from-the-inside-out way. That’s the feeling that gives me wings.  I am motivated too by wanting to be a good storyteller and ambassador for these moments.  Running has changed me in the best of ways, made me open my life to others more and appreciate people.  Every runner I have ever met has a story of overcoming something incredible on some level.  Every one.  As a community, trail runners seem to share a special bond and we are here to lift each other up by sharing ourselves when the trails bring us together and it feels right to do that.  I am very motivated by feeling like I am a part of this tribe. 

A race that changed me is a race I did not run. Sometimes it's not the race you run, but the race someone else does that changes your life. It was Corey’s 50K finish in the November 2021 T-Bunk Endurance Challenge.  Corey and I ran many races together.  However, running was definitely not the same experience for us!  For Corey, running was so much harder. He counted himself, at 6’3 and 225 pounds, in the Clydesdale division of “uphill battle” runners.  Whereas for me running is joyful and light 90% of the time and I am little and thus decent in high heat, humidity, and wind (he gave me the trail name Chuparosa, Spanish for Hummingbird).  He built skill and stamina over ten years and was determined to improve.  On race day, he humbly wrote on his Facebook page “Crossed a goal off my list today by completing my first trail 50k in the South Kettle Moraine.  It was a learning experience and quite honestly an exercise in pain tolerance at times, but very much rewarding as well.  Plus, it’s always fun to see friends and catch up.  I’m not saying I won’t do it again, but I might hold off on signing up until the limping subsides. ”   At the time, he had just started coaching the Germantown Hornets youth wrestling program, and the first thing he told me at home was “This will blow their minds!  If my big carcass can do this, I can convince them that they can do anything.”  True to his nature, he was proud of himself, but only because of what he believed he could inspire in others.

Corey’s 50K changed me.

1)  It’s one thing to win when you are given all you need to make it mostly easy.  It’s nowhere near the win that counts when every single step is hard.

2) What Corey had within him to overcome his battle against pain and win the 50K was a glimpse of what I saw him bring to our final, shared race with time against terminal cancer.  We ‘Found our Tough’.  Again and again, because with cancer you don’t have much choice.