This rail trail. It hasn’t seen a train in many years but it still sees plenty of movement every day. About 80 years ago, my grandfather would drop off steel cans of milk at the train station in town every morning on his way to high school. He and the rest of the Purrier family made a living selling milk down this trail. I’m sure back then my grandfather never in his dreams imagined his granddaughter would be a professional athlete also making her living on this same trail in such a different way. But here I am! I’ve run thousands of miles on the Missisquoi rail trail, through high school and into my professional career I’ve trained for three world championships and the Olympics on it. I often imagine what it looked like with train cars running down it and the Purrier milk cans loaded on the back. It makes me realize just how deep my roots are planted in this Vermont soil. You could say this trail is a special one to me, and beyond that it has been and continues to be a tremendou...