Lanie Brooks

Lanie Mexico

Believe me, it is Lanie Brook’s world, and we are all just participants in it. Or at least that is the way she would like to believe the world works.

Lanie was born and raised in the great state of Mississippi. She primarily grew up in Greenwood, MS, a bustling metropolis of almost 20,000 residents. But all kidding aside, Greenwood is famous for being the first place that B.B. King played his first live radio performance, the final resting place for blues singer Robert Johnson, the headquarters of Viking Range kitchen appliances, and it is the non-Hollywood home for actor Morgan Freeman. Lanie is now also a part of it's legendary history!

In high school Lanie decided to join the track team, for which she ran the hurdles. After her first year though, she decided that running the warm-up mile at practice was “lame,” so she did not return for a 2nd year.

For college Lanie headed off to Ole Miss, where in just 5 years she earned a master’s degree in accounting. After graduating in 2003, she decided to hang around Oxford for a little while and work for a law firm. A couple of years later Lanie came to realization that she was still pretty much trying to live the college lifestyle with people who were actually IN college, so she packed up and came to Nashville.

In 2007 Lanie trained up for the Country Music Half Marathon on her own. She says that it was then she became addicted to running. In 2008 she crushed her old CMHM time by 17 minutes, and has even gone on to beat that time by 10 minutes this year in the Seaside Half Marathon in Florida, finishing in 1:49:48.

She came to East Nasty in September of 2009 after Drew Jones continually berated her with insults until she agreed to give our running group a try. And now wherever East Nasties are in this city, chances are good that Lanie is there too! She even went with the East Nasty group down to Warrior Dash race in Georgia this last year even though she was not participating in the event herself.

This weekend Lanie will be heading up to Chicago, although she will not be able to run in the Chicago Half Marathon as she had planned. I am sure if it was up to her they would put the race on hold and wait until she recovers from her injury. But I am not sure if Lanie’s “way of the world” has made it all the way to Chicago yet.