Deer Creek, CO in 2007 My name is Jan (pronounced "yahn") Wellford. I moved to Keene Valley, NY in 2003 with my wife Meg to live, work and play in the beautiful Adirondack mountains. As an avid hiker, climber and skier I found the perfect job at The Mountaineer, a local outdoor retail store. We had a free place to live with little responsibility as assistant innkeepers at the Keene Valley Lodge, and I was able to spend almost all of my free time in the mountains.
I took up trail running not long after coming to the area, and in 2007 I was inspired to enter several trail races by the Dean Karnazes book Ultramarathon Man. 2008 through early 2010 found me back in the mountains, focusing on speed hiking and setting records for hiking the Adirondack High Peaks supported and unsupported and the Catskills 3500' peaks unsupported, with a couple months off in between to recover from a broken pelvis. I raced some more in 2010 including two attempts at 100-mile ultras, neither of which I finished, and also spent a lot of time in the mountains as I caught the FKT (fastest known time) bug.
After many years of living the "mountain lifestyle" we decided to start a family, and I figured early parenthood would be a good time to train for my first road marathon because of the relatively small amount of time that the training would demand (at least compared to long hiking days, rock climbing, etc). Our son Finn was born in June, 2012 and I spent the summer training for a fall marathon while working part-time and learning to be a parent. I left the Mountaineer in the fall in order to stay home with Finn while Meg went back to work. I started this blog in May of 2013 and plan to write training articles, route recommendations, gear reviews, race reports and more in addition to keeping a full training log.
Thanks for reading the site! Please feel free to email me with questions or comments.
I took up trail running not long after coming to the area, and in 2007 I was inspired to enter several trail races by the Dean Karnazes book Ultramarathon Man. 2008 through early 2010 found me back in the mountains, focusing on speed hiking and setting records for hiking the Adirondack High Peaks supported and unsupported and the Catskills 3500' peaks unsupported, with a couple months off in between to recover from a broken pelvis. I raced some more in 2010 including two attempts at 100-mile ultras, neither of which I finished, and also spent a lot of time in the mountains as I caught the FKT (fastest known time) bug.
After many years of living the "mountain lifestyle" we decided to start a family, and I figured early parenthood would be a good time to train for my first road marathon because of the relatively small amount of time that the training would demand (at least compared to long hiking days, rock climbing, etc). Our son Finn was born in June, 2012 and I spent the summer training for a fall marathon while working part-time and learning to be a parent. I left the Mountaineer in the fall in order to stay home with Finn while Meg went back to work. I started this blog in May of 2013 and plan to write training articles, route recommendations, gear reviews, race reports and more in addition to keeping a full training log.
Thanks for reading the site! Please feel free to email me with questions or comments.
Whiteface Uphill Race, 2012
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