idahoseniorindependent.com TAKE ONE! FREE! Staying Active Is An Understatement For Sandpoint’s Nancy Schmidt By Jack McNeel The mountains of the west and the open spaces were the lure for Nancy Schmidt when she moved from Pittsburgh ten years ago and accepted a job with Kaniksu Health Services in Sandpoint. She has been contracted to the school district since the district lost funding for counselors at the elementary school level. “We help underinsured and uninsured people and others who have fallen through the cracks with health care,” she explains. For more than two decades prior to her move, Nancy had been running marathons – including some of the big ones like Boston, New York, Chicago, Big Sur, Paris, and Stockholm. “It was sort of my way of vacationing,” she explains. “I’d do a marathon every couple of months. I set a goal to do 50 and ended up doing two additional ones.” And how she has taken to the mountains and open spaces! The move didn’t slow her down; it just changed her running a bit. “I never stopped running,” she says laughing and explaining that previously she ran marathons on streets and highways. But Nancy got into trail running two years ago and has continued to run as much as ever after ending her marathon years. “But I’m not training as hard as I was. I’m not young anymore either,” she says wryly, although at 57 she’s not that old either and some of these trail runs are 50K, longer than a marathon, which is about 42K. When she first moved to Sandpoint Nancy started hiking with a local group and some folks from western Montana. Then she met Mike Ehredt who’s a long distance runner and trains runners. “I started training for some of these more grueling alpine runs,” Nancy explains. “There’s a group of us called the 7B runners (7B is the license plate for Bonner County) and Mike teaches us how to be able to run for 30 or 40 miles.” She has now run two 50K trail runs plus a couple of 25K runs. “They’re much more difficult than a marathon because you’re including elevation and running on boulders and trails that people hike. Sometimes it’s so steep you have to use your hands and legs to get over boulders. Some can be pretty technical.” Several organizations put on these races, mentioning the Big Sky Ski Area in Montana, which holds a race she did last year called “The Rut” – one of the toughest in the country. “You run to the top of Lone Peak, which is (Continued on page 40)
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