Sherry Traher

Ultra trail runner Sherry Traher took a few spare moments from her wildly busy schedule to talk about running. She’s a mother of four, with daughters in high school and sixth grade and twin sons in second grade. Working from home, she delivers customer service for JetBlue. And did we mention she also teaches at her local gym?

I’m out of the door and on the trail usually by 5 in the morning. My day starts early so I can get in the necessary training in before my kids all get up and need to get to school.

Those mountain trails around Traher’s Ogden, Utah home are the reason she switched from marathons to trail running a decade ago. I could get more mileage in on the trails, and my body didn’t hurt as much. I could run 15 miles on the trail, and it felt like I had done 7 miles on the road. And when you get out of the city and off the road, you can get a kind of mental clarity.

I had been into more of the artistic side of athleticism, just staying active through dance and yoga. Once I got to college and I needed a stress reliever, I started running.I found some other people who liked to run, and our goals were all similar. They had run a few marathons. That just seemed daunting. Then I thought, well, maybe I could try it.

Traher was at the top of her game in 2016 when degenerative disk disease caught up with her. Surgery on her spine set her back nearly a year. It kind of shut down everything for me because I was in so much pain, and the surgery was severe. It was a long recovery, a good six to nine months of very minimal stuff before I could ease back into hiking and slowly back into running. This is mentally, emotionally really hard.

Good friends helped me realize this was a very small moment in my life. It put my life back into perspective. It’s not so much about the finish line end result, but how I’m enjoying the process of training and staying healthy.

Traher tried other compression socks before settling on CEP. But my feet would blister. Or they didn’t seem like they were anything more than high knee socks. You put on a pair of CEP, and your legs just feel like they’re rejuvenated. They keep the energy in your legs. I think I have my very first pair of CEP socks. There are no holes in them, they last so long. And the compression doesn’t go away.