I had a very stressful morning. I’m leaving for Craftsbury, VT on Sunday for two weeks of coaching at the summer running camps. I love the job, but prepping my presentations has been time consuming, and as a homebody I generally get stressed when I have to leave my family for long periods of time. […]
Busted: Never Steal Skechers From Your Mom
July 8, 2014 By 6 Comments
I spent the 4th of July holiday with my parents up in Maine. As a shoe reviewer, I tend to travel with a lot of shoes, and while packing to come home yesterday I loaded them all into the Thule box on top of our car. Apparently I swiped an extra pair…busted on Facebook!
Kid Cross Country: What My 8 Year Old Daughter Taught Me About Running and Competing
June 10, 2014 By 57 Comments
”It’s at the borders of pain and suffering that the men are separated from the boys.” -Emil Zátopek This is not a post about men. It’s not a post about boys. It’s a post about my little girl. My daughter Emma is 8 years old. She’s a kind-hearted, gentle soul who doesn’t have an aggressive […]
Flirting With Heat Exhaustion on Today’s Run
June 2, 2014 By 15 Comments
There’s a fine line between being tough about your training and being stupid. I crossed that line today, then continued to run a bit further. I had 8 miles on my schedule, but honestly had not thought to look at the weather report this morning. I was working in my air-conditioned office at the clinic […]
Six Things I Learned on a 14 Mile Run This Morning
May 12, 2014 By 13 Comments
I ran 14 miles this morning. That’s not a particularly unusual amount for a distance runner, but it was the longest I’ve run since last summer, and today is the warmest day of the year so far in New Hampshire. As always, the first long run in heat each year is cause for some gentle […]
5 Things I Learned From Running A Trail Race Last Weekend
April 29, 2014 By 17 Comments
It’s been a long time since I’ve run a long trail race. I paced for about 7 miles last year at the Vermont 100 (my runner dropped), but the last trail race longer than a 5K that I ran for myself was the HAT Run 50K back in 2011. I forgot how much fun they […]
A Tale of Two 5K’s: How a Change in Race Approach Led to a Near PR
April 21, 2014 By 26 Comments
Sometime last year I decided that it was time to step away from the marathon for awhile and focus on shorter, faster races. I love marathons, but the training cycles had become a grind, and I was tired of focusing all of my effort on only one or two races per year. I have also […]
How Building a Blog is a Lot Like Running Your First Marathon
March 19, 2014 By 2 Comments
I got an email from a reader a couple of days ago who is in the process of starting a running blog. He was asking about how to build a blog audience and how to grow traffic (among other things). The email reminded me that I started another site several months ago to answer questions […]
Setting Running Goals: Shorter and Faster for 2014
March 10, 2014 By 24 Comments
For the past several years I’ve been in marathon mode. I don’t know exactly why or how it happened, but I fell into the trap of feeling like I needed to run a marathon (or three) every year. To be honest, ever since qualifying for Boston back in 2011 I haven’t really enjoyed the marathon […]
Thou Shalt Not Laugh at a Fellow Runner
February 13, 2014 By 11 Comments
This week a video of a runner wiping out on a snowy street went viral – if you haven’t seen it yet have a look: I couldn’t help but laugh at the irony of the situation. I’ve been lucky so far this winter. Given the cold, we’ve had snow and ice on the sidewalks for […]
This Is What Happiness Looks Like!
December 15, 2013 By 9 Comments
We got our first big snow of the season last night here in New Hampshire. One of my favorite forms of winter exercise is snowshoeing (a type of shoe I know almost nothing about!), so I decided to take my black lab Jack out for a trek. We stopped at the head of the trail […]
More On Leaving Academia to Become a Blogger: My Interview With University Affairs
October 23, 2013 By 6 Comments
Several months ago I was contacted by Dr. Jennfier Polk, who at the time was writing a blog titled From Ph.D. To Life that focused on career options for Ph.D.s, with a special focus on non-academic careers. Jennifer had seen the post I had written about leaving my academic job to pursue this blog full-time, […]
Changes Coming to Runblogger
September 25, 2013 By 10 Comments
Things have been a bit quiet here on the blog for the past few weeks. Despite the seeming lack of activity, I’ve been hammering away in the background at a furious rate on a few projects that have been nagging me. For the past week or so I’ve been working almost non-stop on an academic […]
Running Should Not Be a Source of Stress: Why I’m Pulling the Plug on My Fall Ultra
September 3, 2013 By 35 Comments
I have a hard time backing out of something I’ve decided to do. As far as I can recall, I’ve only once missed a race that I signed up to run. It was the 2011 Manchester Half Marathon, and I opted to skip it because I strained my back a week or so beforehand while […]
What I Did With My Summer Vacation Part 1: Craftsbury Running Camps
August 28, 2013 By 11 Comments
For the past 10 years I was a professor at a small college. Normally come late August my stress level is through the roof as I prepare for the coming school year, but having resigned from my faculty position in May, this summer has been a bit different. Going into Labor Day weekend I’m feeling […]
