Larissa first moved to Wisconsin with her family in 2005, and has generally called herself a Wisconsinite ever since. She briefly abandoned the North (and its 5 months of winter) for the warmer climates of Northwest Arkansas in 2013 for graduate school, and while in NWA, fell in love with trail running. She had always appreciated trails from the back of a horse – her first experience with distance sports being equine Endurance Riding, which she has competed in on and off for twenty years now. But on the extensive and gorgeous mountain bike trail systems of NWA, she discovered the wonders of trail running and in connection, the close knit trail community. When she ran her first trail race in 2021, it became her new obsession. The importance of the trail community become obvious when a 7-tornado storm ripped through NWA on Memorial Day weekend in 2024, destroying miles of trails in parks across the region and prompting a clean-up effort that lasted for almost a year. As she volunteered on trail workdays, she saw trail lovers and organizations come together in incredible ways to clean-up and, in some cases, rebuild devastated systems. It was an outpouring of community energy and focus that left a huge impact and made her want to be involved in the organizations that helped maintain these trail systems that were clearly so important to the local community.

She moved back to Eau Claire in May 2025 and begin exploring the local trail systems and seeking ways to also be involved in the trail community. As of March 2026, she is the newest Member-at-large for the CORBA Board of Directors. Having served on a BOD before, for an endurance riding organization in Arkansas, she feels it is a way to contribute some of her energy and enthusiasm for trails, her experience being on a board, and her professional skills as a writer. As a college English professor with a background in Creative Writing and content writing, she wants to use her voice for a community that thrives on story and making itself heard and seen to the broader region. Trails and trail events bring people together and promote a unique positive energy that she hasn’t found elsewhere, and she wants to help make them something that this beautiful corner of Wisconsin is known for.