I moved back to Louisville in November 2018 after being gone for 17 years. Aside from my family and a few close friends, I didn’t really have any social life left in the city where I grew up. A chance Facebook post caught my attention in April of this year about a group of ladies who needed another person for their team to run the Ragnar trail race at Otter Creek this past May. I told them I was game, never realizing that simple “I’m in if you need me” would change my life.

Fast forward six weeks from the Facebook post and I found myself camping in the woods with seven strangers- women from different walks of life, with different levels of running abilities, and not a single one of us had known all of us before that weekend. Some were connected through a shared work history, some had kids together at the same school, some were related...and then there was me. The random Facebook lady.

Our weekend wasn’t without strife- we had several rolled ankles, not a lot of sleep, one team member had to go to the hospital to be treated for dehydration...but there was no arguing, no cattiness, no drama.

We ran our 120 miles of trails in a little over 29 hours, came in last of the all women’s group, and finished near the bottom overall. But it didn’t matter one bit. Once the weekend was over, we each found that these women have become our community. The group texts haven’t stopped- we use them to offer advice, pump each the up, share achievements, or set up our next outing. During the Otter Creek event, we were the Ragnar Shieldmaidens. This is a title I’m proud to hold and a sisterhood I couldn’t have imagined when I moved back to Louisville less than a year ago.