Strong Epic Life

I’m always telling my athletes to be tough and don’t be afraid to get gritty…Sabrina Kingston-Miles has taken gritty to the next level. This past weekend she ran the Mississippi Trail 100. It poured for the first 3 hours which left the trail more of a river. Having 8 loops to complete, she waded/swam/trudged through water crossings up to and over her head multiple times for a 3rd place female finish in 29:22:07. It doesn’t get much grittier than this…congratulations Sabrina! I’m so proud of you!💪🏻🏃🏼‍♀️❤️

I've been pretty remiss in posting about the amazing things going on over here at Strong Epic Life... in the last few months Kelly Stoner Baker and Paulla Cramblett McLellan completed multiple races including a 50 miler and several 50k's between the two of them. Mariah Fields finished the Fierce Dragon 40 miler. Tracy Gretick has knocked it out of the park repeatedly setting new PR's at multiple distances and Angie Sagon ran her fastest trail pace so far at a 15k this past weekend! This past weekend Mike Haviland crushed another race-- he finished the Pistol Ultra 50k in 7:45-- placing him 86th out of 141 runners and the only male over 80!
And these are just some of the running accomplishments... there's so much work being done-- weights being lifted, yoga being practiced, miles being cycled, even slopes being skied... I am truly fortunate to have such an amazing group of clients who are all so dedicated to living their strongest healthiest most epic life!
And we had our first retreat last month that was such a success that I've already booked a bigger place for our next one in October! We ate amazing healthy food, hiked, ran, practiced yoga, hula hooped and even spun some fire :)
We have some exciting things coming up and I'll do my best to get better updating here :)

I want to thank my client Tabitha for the heartfelt conversation this morning as she swore her way through her workout…and look- for those of you who didn’t know—-there’s scientific proof that swearing can help during strenuous activity!

I made a blog post about this a little over a year ago. I’ve had a good year, definitely worked hard for it, but I had a string of “failures” last year that I had been working through emotionally when I wrote the blog post. Today my “daily inspirational quote email” threw me this…it was a nice humbling reminder of where I come from- I don’t ever want to get so confident that I forget how hard I had to work to get here. https://www.strongepiclife.com/post/semantics

Happy belated 80th birthday to my incredible client Mike Haviland and a huge congratulations on his 13:27:24 finish at Kansas Rails-to-Trails 50 miler setting a state record for his age group!

Along with all of the amazing strong women I coach, I’m fortunate to coach some incredible men as well. One of them being Mike Haviland who will be turning 80 in less than 2 weeks and completed Hennepin 50-miler earlier this month with a finish time of 13:18! Mike’s attitude and sense of humor are the greatest, working with him is so rewarding and inspiring! Next on his schedule is Kansas Rails to Trails 50-miler the day before his birthday… I’ll be sure to post an update!

It was a big weekend of strong finishes for us at Strong Epic Life! Kelly Stoner Baker finished her first official trail marathon at Mystery Mountain Marathon! 26 miles and 6,000’ of elevation gain in 7:26:35!! I’m so proud of this lady!! Coaching Kelly is so rewarding and fun— she has an amazing attitude and incredible determination! She started running a year ago and is getting ready for her first 50K next month 💪🏻🏃🏼‍♀️ Congratulations Kelly!!

I’m so grateful to coach some really amazing women❤️ Tracy Gretick has been training all year for the Chicago marathon in hopes of beating her previous finish time of 7:48… yesterday she finished in 5:39– over 2 hours faster than last time she ran it!! She has been so dedicated to her training and worked so hard— I am just so proud of this lady!! 💪🏻🏃🏼‍♀️

Some pretty epic work was done this weekend! I had the honor running at an 8 hour event with two of of the amazing women I coach. Tracy Gretick came all the way from Ohio to run Hot to Trot- 8 hours of repeating the same 1.2 mile crushed gravel unshaded loop in the sweltering Georgia heat and got a marathon distance done! Kelly Stoner Baker had a goal of getting her first marathon and when she met thw goal there was still time on the clock so she kept going and ended up getting 29 miles! I’m so proud of these ladies!!!

Beautiful views on the DRT this weekend❤️ I’m really excited to have 2 clients training for the 40 miler and 40k at Baby Dragon run on this trail in August...and I’m headed back for the 100-miler. There’s something about running a tough mountain course that I can’t get enough of...

I’m pretty excited to add Certified Ultrarunning Coach to my list of certifications! If you’ve been on the fence about signing up for a race or even about lacing up some shoes and starting a running program- I’d love to help! Message me if you you’d like a free consult to talk about it!

This post is a bit overdue...another amazing accomplishment by one of my clients💪🏻❤️
Tracy Gretick joined my morning workout team back in January as she was recovering from covid and 2 rounds of pneumonia. She showed up with determination and an incredibly strong will to reclaim her health and rebuild her fitness. She didn’t let getting out of breath discourage her and kept logging in to our morning zoom workouts 5 days a week and started slowly building up her mileage running again. It’s been a long road, but it’s been such an inspiration to see her rise up and take charge of her health. We’ve been working on her nutrition and I find myself wanting to drive the 650 miles to her house for dinner when I see the beautiful pictures of healthy meals she posts in her food log- and on top of working out daily and running, she spends hours a day in her garden growing literally just about every vegetable under the sun! Tracy has run multiple races of 5k, 10 mile and half marathon distance in the last few months, but now she’s officially an ultrarunner— she completed her first 50k (31.2 miles!) at Eagle Up Endurance Run in Ohio and all of us on the workout team are so proud of her and so honored to have been part of her amazing journey of getting healthy, losing weight (almost 20 lbs!) and getting strong! What a beautiful strong epic life you’re living Tracy! 💪🏻❤️🏃🏼‍♀️Congratulations!!

Strength doesn't come from what you can do, it comes from accomplishing what you thought you couldn't do...

What do you think you can't do? Come on over to strongepiclife.com and let's get you on the road to accomplishing it

I wish I did a better job of remembering to post about it when my clients do amazing things...but this one cannot go unmentioned. About a year and a half ago I started coaching Kelly Stoner Baker. She was recovering from breast cancer and chemo and was determined to get healthy and strong. She worked out 5 mornings a week and quickly started gaining strength and after a while we added nutrition coaching to her program. Changing lifelong eating habits is a huge challenge and Kelly was patient with the slow process I like to follow and over the last 9 months has made changes that will last the rest of her life—- and since we started together she has lost 40 lbs! This past winter she bought a treadmill and after a few weeks of doing some walk/run intervals on it she reached out and asked if we could add run coaching to her program and wanted to know if I thought she could run a marathon. She started training for a mountain marathon in October and we started going for weekly trail runs together, all the while she continued to show up 5 mornings a week for our Zoom group workout. As part of her training I suggested she enter a 6 hour looped trail endurance race this past weekend with the goal being to finish 13 miles. Kelly followed the race plan we came up with together and stuck to her nutrition plan through the whole race and ended up running 19 miles with 4,419’ of elevation gain and winning her first race ever!
I am so grateful to know this woman and to have the honor of being her coach and truly consider her a friend- I’m so happy to be part of your journey Kelly and I can’t wait to see what amazing things you accomplish next!

Look at the amazing progress she has made!

I'm so excited to share my latest adventure. I'm working my way up to my 200 miler next month- this was a nice step in the right direction. And it's a perfect example of how it literally takes a village to finish sometimes ;)

Pistol 100 miler I’ve taken a couple days to try to process my latest running adventure… Last year I trained with Liz for Pistol 100 and when it canceled we decided to run anyways on a local crushed gravel loop here in Canton Georgia. We got it done and had a buckle made, but in my heart I still really wanted th...

It's not too late to get in on the January fitness kick-off! I coach a group of really inspiring fun women every morning at 8:00am- you can try it out for just $75 a month! Feel free to message me if you have any questions! https://www.strongepiclife.com/services

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Just a reminder that 9:30am yoga is canceled this morning- hope everyone has a great weekend and I'll see you next week!

“There is only one reality, but there are many ways a reality can be interpreted.” ~BKS Iyenagr
Join me on the mat tonight at 6:30pm and let's interpret a peaceful reality together

“Yoga allows you to rediscover a sense of wholeness in your life, where you do not feel like you are constantly trying to fit broken pieces together.” ~BKS Iyengar

Making sense of things these days can be difficult...life does seem to be scattered into a million broken pieces as we adjust to a new norm...join me on the mat and let's rediscover a sense of wholeness together!
Tuesdays and Thursdays at 9:30am and Wednesdays at 6:30pm
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“Action is movement with intelligence. The world is filled with movement. What the world needs is more conscious movement, more action.” BKS Iyengar

Join me tonight for some conscious movement. I'll be teaching hatha yoga at 6:30pm on zoom and would love to see you there

What’s your next goal? I want to help you train to get there... an hour a day can make all the difference. Contact me if you’d like to check out our daily group workout- or share with someone who might be interested. We all deserve to achieve epic in our lives 💪🏻❤️

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I’m heading off for another epic adventure this weekend at the Georgia Jewel 100. I dropped at mile 70 last year after a failed attempt at running with no crew...I have a better plan this year and I’m determined to find some redemption and come home with a buckle.
Don’t ever let fear of failure keep you from pursuing your goals ❤️

So much gratitude for all the yogis who showed up on zoom for my first Wednesday night class ❤️❤️❤️ I’m taking requests for next week if there’s a pose you’re just dying to hold while I tell stories... 😉

Living a healthy life and prioritizing taking care of ourselves can be such a challenge...if it were easy, everyone would be healthy and fit, but it takes determination, sacrifice and commitment. I feel so fortunate that my days are spent working with women who demonstrate all of those qualities and inspire me to do better myself. Some of them work full time+ jobs, some of them have small children, some are single mothers, some of them are dealing with the struggles of schools being closed and their days are spent trying to juggle their work and homeschool their kids... whatever their situation though, all of them show up ready to do the work and through the shared laughter and heart to heart conversations I'm always struck by how real these women are and how much trust they put in me. This week I want to give some recognition to Kathy Andrew and her amazing son Jack. Kathy is strong, smart, witty, compassionate and so much more... Among her many roles, she's Jack's amazing caregiver and I've had the pleasure of getting to know both of them during her workouts the last few months. Jack and I share our own interaction when her back is turned to the screen and this week Jack came to her rescue with the comfort of sharing his blankets when things got tough...and Kathy just kept lifting while thanking him. This is love and commitment in action. In a perfect world we would all have time to leave everything behind and go to the gym for a workout...let there be no excuses- if Kathy can chest press with blankets on her head then the rest of us can certainly get through a workout ;)

Here's my latest post- check out Katie Spotz: a beautiful example of an amazing woman living a strong epic life

More adventures of The Adventure Club Katie Spotz is one of the people who have influenced me the most in my pursuit of an adventurous life. We were introduced almost 7 years ago and I was immediately inspired-- a mutual friend had invited her to a holiday party at my house and she ran 10 miles in the snow to attend. Definitely my kind....

My Thursday morning yoga ladies ❤️❤️❤️ And this week Isabel’s new bunny Lentil joined us 😉

A little recap of the weekend...I’m really grateful for what my body is capable of— even when I don’t accomplish what I set out to do. https://www.strongepiclife.com/post/happy-as-a-clam-or-as-a-lobster

Happy as a clam...or as a lobster My adventures this weekend were nothing like what I had expected, but I guess that’s what makes them adventure... We had a 7 hour training run planned for Saturday morning- I wasn‘t concerned with distance, I just really wanted time on my feet. Our plan had been to go to Redtop Mountain and park...