Sunday, November 1, 2009

World Trophy 50k Championships

I became friends with Amanda Stickel in February of this year and was lucky enough to see her run in the US Nationals 50k championships on a very cold day in March, in New York. She finished 3rd in New York, her first real ultra race. She has battled with an eating disorder and a lack of self confidence, but through all this she has continued to do the one thing she loves strongly and that is run.
This past weekend in Gibralter she ran in the IAU World Trophy 50k Championships, in conditions completely opposite to those in March. For a brief time she ran in second place, behind the leader and eventual winner of this race and the one in March, American team mate Kami Semick. She would eventually fade back into 5th place ( second American woman ), in a very respectable time of 3:52:38. Certainly showing the World that she belongs there. Congratulations Amanda! Job well done.

1 comment:

runamanda said...

Thanks I just saw this. I wish I could have done better. But they ranked the top 5 before the race and I wasn't in there. I got confidence in the second lap when I was able to over think the thoughts in my head and go ahead and pass Monica (3rd place this year in the World 100k). My mind kept telling me what are you doing you can't run with her. But she had a bad lap and I just continued my pace and went ahead and passed her for a little bit. Then I faded and unfortunately I saw no one was gaining on me and got content in 5th place. Hopefully sometime in the future I'll get a chance to redeem myself and have a much better race and represent the USA even better. Thanks