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Long Trail: A New Approach – Day 2
Day 2 – Tuesday 7/12/2022 Goddard Shelter (24.1) to Peru Peak Shelter (64.5) 40.4 miles / 8,153 ft gain / 8,605 ft loss 2.7 mph Start: 4:51am Finish: 7:50pm Elapsed: 14h 59m It was nice to start the day only needing my headlamp for about half an hour before clicking it off. The sky was […]
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Long Trail: A New Approach – Day 1
On Monday, July 11th at noon I began my third fastest known time attempt on the Long Trail. After my first two failed attempts I’m not going to lie- I felt silly and embarrassed for thinking of trying again. Like.. was there something wrong with me? Was I obsessed? Did I not know when to just […]
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To Wait and See
I played all my cards right to the best of my knowledge, everything went exactly to plan, and in the end the Long Trail won again. As I’m writing this at 6:11am on Tuesday, this would have been my third morning on the trail. Had I still been hiking, I’d likely either be descending Bolton […]
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Long Trail: Here We Go!
Greetings from Jay, Vermont. My pack is packed (unlike what you see above haha), my alarm is set, my resupplies have been cached, and tomorrow I’ll start heading south from the US/Canada border doing my favorite thing in the world: eating lots of snacks. Oh, and hiking until I drop. Tomorrow, Sunday, July 3rd I’m attempting […]
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Catamount 50K: Oh, the Humanity (and Humidity)!
This photo from the Catamount 50K makes me giggle. I see a strong, confident, playful person crossing the finish line and wouldn’t guess she’d spent the past 30+ miles feeling like a giant wimp. The mountains will humble you like that! I went into this race feeling a little apprehensive. I knew I was in […]
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In the In Between
After three weeks of living out of a suitcase and driving my packed-to-the-brim 4runner Tina across the country, I’m happy to have finally landed in Vermont for the summer. I have a little loft apartment all to myself, serving as a basecamp nestled among the most challenging peaks along the Long Trail. I’ve always romanticized this idea […]
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A Sleepless Night on the BMT
Debbie and I rolled up to the Lakeshore Trailhead just in the nick of time. We were shocked, in a good way, to see Tara power walking down the road toward the parking lot we’d planned to meet at, well before her predicted time of “no sooner than 8:00pm” (it was presently around 7:00pm). She […]
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Taking the Next Step
Photo by Jason Hill Hello from Atlanta, Georgia! The cross country portion of my trek is complete, and the rest of the summer will be spent up and down the east coast until landing in Boston, Massachusetts. I’m happy to share that starting this fall, I will be pursuing a Master of Music in Collaborative Piano […]
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A Trail Tour East
Hello from Flagstaff, Arizona, where the sun is a-BUN-dant! If you’re not catching my pun, I channeled my inner Coree Woltering and threw on some buns (plus a whole lot of sunscreen) for a nice long run on the Arizona Trail with my friend KT. We’re road tripping our way across the US for my move east, KT joining […]
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The Fond Days of Yesteryear
From left to right: me, Shasta Zielke, and Fionna Fallon at Duniway Track. Photo by Jason Hill My last days in Portland have been filled up with all of the things I love most here: time spent with friends, running in all my favorite places, visiting all of my local haunts. When I think of the […]
Who is Mercury?
Liz Derstine, trail name âMercuryâ, is a distance runner, endurance hiker, writer, and musician residing in Boston, MA. She holds fastest known times for women on the Appalachian Trail (supported, northbound), Long Trail (self-supported), and Pinhoti Trail (self-supported).
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Mercury on the Run 