« A very happy 5-year anniversary | Main | There is no therapy as good as a long, hard trail run. »

Shar

I last saw Shar when I was about 13 years old. But she has inspired me for years with the stories about her adventures running and biking all over the world.

Shar's two kids attended elementary school with me in Southern California. Several years ago I read in the school's alumni bulletin that Shar had embarked on a yearlong biking trip around the world. I was just starting to get into endurance sports myself at the time, and my impression of her immediately changed from mom of some kids I barely knew to brazen adventurer.

She was an ultramarathon runner, multiple Ironman finisher and accomplished cyclist. A few years ago I started noticing her race reports in the FireWire, the newsletter of the Inland Inferno Triathlon Club. While I'm not a member of the club, it is my hometown club and I feel a special affection for it (which is why I read the newsletters on their web site). And reading Shar's reports made me realize that this woman really knew how to wring the most out of life.

While on that 18,000-mile biking trip in 2000, Shar ran two marathons a week apart in South Africa, another one in Germany, and a half-marathon in France, getting back on the bike the next day after all of these jaunts. To read her descriptions, you might think that finding a marathon to run was like getting to spend a day at Disneyland. Running long was a real delight to Shar. Here's a great story about another one of her adventures.

This summer, just a few months after running this year's Antarctica Marathon, Shar was diagnosed with a rare form of liver cancer. She died two weeks ago. I think it's safe to say that she lived more in her 50-some years than most do in a much longer lifetime.

Happy trails, Shar.

October 31, 2005 9:30 AM