What’s harder than attending a six month, grueling, Fire Academy? Doing it twice.

This week The Grit Factory welcomes guest blogger, Britt Mason.  Britt is a professional Firefighter/EMT and an elite Adventure Racer representing Rev3.  Her post details the arduous task of completing, not one, but two firefighting academies and how her experience in sports allowed her to get it done.

Technician I Britt Mason

Last year, I made the decision to change my life and move to northern Virginia. It’s easy when you’re just applying for jobs and thinking of all the possibilities, but when you land the job and it becomes a reality, it’s a bit scary. Born and raised in Illinois, leaving friends and family was hard. The move and all of its changes took grit in itself, but not as much as completing my second professional fire rescue academy. Continue reading →

Over MLK weekend, my way older brother turned 40 and to celebrate I ran in the FootRx Frosty Foot 50K trail race. This awesome 50K utilizes the absolutely world class trail system at Tsali which is located in Nantahala National Forest here in Western North Carolina. The rolling, mostly single track trails, trace the fingers of Lake Fontana which sits squarely in the shadow of the Smokey Mountains. It is impressive country, even in the dead of Winter.

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Lets face it, you cant always feel like a winner.  This past weekend I participated in the Xterra Warrior Creek Trail Half Marathon put on by the Brushy Mountain Cyclists Club in Boomer, North Carolina. The course was a single 13.1 mile loop that flowed through the woods along the banks of the W. Scott Kerr Reservoir.  Morning temps were in the 50’s and on their way up to 70. The morning fog would burn off yielding bright sunny skies. This was a small, grass roots operation perfectly representative of what you can expect at a winter trail running event. Great volunteers, easy parking, an RD with a local accent, easy breezy packet pick-up, a somewhat lame race shirt destined to join the rest of my somewhat lame collection, and basically just a whole bunch of folks that seemed to know each other ready to have a morning in the woods. Seems pretty perfect right? That’s what I thought too.

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