Hi! I’m glad you’re here! I’m Cassie, a 30-something Colorado native. I like to run.

For most of my life, I’ve been a small-town girl. I grew up in the country outside a small town, went to college in a bigger town, then moved to a different small town and started teaching. When I started this blog, I lived out on the Colorado plains and taught English at a tiny high school. In 2016, my husband and I decided it was time to move back west — toward the mountains — so we both found new jobs, sold our house, and moved to Milliken, Colorado. It’s still small(ish) and surrounded by farmland, so I decided to keep my blog’s name, even though I’m no longer as rural as when I started blogging.

I started running in high school, though not remotely competitively. Aside from the one season I played soccer (oh, you didn’t know that “played” and “bench-warmed” are synonyms?), I was not an athlete as a kid. I sporadically ran/walked around the corn fields behind my house, with two goals: 1. Don’t get fat (I was shallow like that) and  2. Stay in good enough shape that I wouldn’t be left in the dust while hiking with my dad and brother. Then, I went to college in Fort Collins – a city near mountains and with tons of open spaces, a terrific trail system, and a gorgeous campus with a perimeter that’s about a 5k.  Colorado State also has a rec center bigger than my hometown. All those amazing running opportunities, along with my freshman roommate (who was a high school state champion cross-country runner), took my running from sporadic to almost daily. I loved it, but I still ran only for fitness and never dreamed of competing, especially since I also loved to hike the nearby mountain trails as often as possible on the weekends and would rather do that than run (trail running wasn’t so trendy then, so of course I didn’t think of that).

I graduated in 2007 and took a teaching job out on the plains of Colorado, which was quite an adjustment for this mountain-loving girl. Since hiking became a much less-frequent option but I still loved being outdoors, I started running more and more. Not long after I moved, I met a girl named Jaylin, a fitness freak like me who worked out at my gym. When we met, I was bridal bootcamping it for my 2008 wedding, but the next year, Jaylin convinced me to run my first half-marathon – Colorado Colfax in 2009 (which she ran five months pregnant, because she’s a rockstar) —  and I was hooked. I ran the half at the Denver Marathon (before it was Rock ‘n Roll) that fall, then decided to go big and try for a full. In June 2010, the hubby and I took a vacation to Seattle, where I ran Rock ‘n Roll Seattle. And so began my love affair with the full marathon.

Since then, I’ve run the Colorado Colfax Marathon (2011), Rock ‘n Roll Denver (2011 ), the Estes Park Marathon (2012), Boston (2013), Rock ‘n Roll Denver (again – 2013), the Colorado Fall Classic Marathon (2014), and the Lincoln Marathon (2015). My PR is 3:13, which I’ve run THREE TIMES. I can’t seem to get over that hump.

After eight road marathons and some random halfs, 10ks, and 5ks, I ventured onto the trails (even though I still lived on the plains) and ran the Blue Sky Marathon in 2015. Then, we job searched, and moved, and I got injured, and I haven’t run a marathon since.

Now that I’m closer to the trails, I plan to venture deeper into trail running, but I still love the roads, too — there’s nothing like that leg-burning, lung-searing finish of a race well run.

I started this blog in 2013 to have a place to talk about running without annoying my non-runner friends and family, and as a way to make myself write more (because an English teacher who doesn’t write is like an overweight doctor who smokes). Sometimes, I’m good about updating regularly. Other times, I’ll go several weeks without writing a single word (but I’m really working on consistency). I try to keep my posts running- or at least outdoors-specific, but I care about a lot of things, so I may venture occasionally into education issues, or politics, or the environment, other things I care about. If you’re not into that, skip those posts and come back next time.

Thanks for stopping by Rural Running Redhead. Let’s get this new friendship started!