Vern Weisensel:

“In my early years I was a scrawny kid with thick glasses and asthma, not good at sports and never would have seen myself as a runner. Nonetheless, in high school I joined the cross country team, and though I was never the fastest, I did discover a pure joy in running. Unfortunately, the college years involved a lot of junk food and not much exercise. By 2009 my idea of exercise was lifting the remote with one hand and pizza with the other.

It was time for a change, so I trained for the 2009 UW-L Turkey Trot and ran my first 5k as an adult. That first 5k started a snowball effect that has led to dozens of 5ks, 10ks, etc; 65+ half marathon races, 20 marathons, 3 50k’s, the Goosebumps 6 Hour Run (2014) and 24 Hr Run (2015-23); in 2016 I started pace running races with the Grand Bluff Running Pace Team, and I’m a member of the United States Running Streak Association (running one continuous mile every calendar day since August 2013)

Running with Grand Bluff Training has, for me, been life changing. The opportunity to see runners of all abilities achieve their goals and know that I was, in some way, a part of that, is absolutely incredible. Through watching others I’ve learned about myself and about the human spirit, and a lot of my old pre-conceived notions about people have been challenged. My experiences with this awesome group have taught me that you absolutely cannot judge a book by it’s cover; nor can you judge a runner by their body shape, age, or the clothes they’re wearing. Society taught me that an athlete looks and dresses a certain way, GBT has taught me that an athlete is defined by the heart of the individual.  More importantly, I’ve become a member of an ever-growing community of runners.  The welcoming, inclusive group that I’ve helped to foster continues to amaze me year after year, and I’m so happy to be included amongst these incredible athletes.

I’m looking forward to another great year of running with these awesome runners! Hope to see you there!”