A Figure in the Landscape
Ancient Chinese painting is known for its sharp contrast to the typical Western style. In Western art, it is customary to center the subject, to indicate their authority and power by giving them a gravity which the eye can’t ignore. Filling the frame, frozen in some bombastic pose, perhaps, in a moment of triumph, or bundled in agony and grief. Their emotion and their actions
Welcome to the Dark Side of Trail Running!
I have to admit that, once upon a time, I felt apprehensive about steep, gnarly trail races. But I can still recall seeing an iconic photo of my friend Pete Kresock, cresting the hill as he reached The View at the 2021 Hyner Trail Challenge, and feeling a sense of awe as I perused the details of that image. To be able to climb something like
A Few of My Injuries and How I’ve Recovered From Them
February 4, 2023 marked the fifth anniversary of my pelvic fracture, and I originally thought that would be a great time to discuss a few of the injuries I’ve experienced as a runner, as well as how I recovered from them. However, being injured at the time (refer to rolled ankle description below), I felt I was giving too much energy to injuries in general,
The Monster
There’s a monster on my heels. I recently spent a month volunteering at a spiritual retreat center in the lower Catskills. Shrouded in solitude, I was looking forward to devoting all my energy to the pursuits which truly matter to me. During this time, I did hard workouts twice a week in preparation for the 50K I’ll be running in June. These workouts were targeted to
Past Time
When the gun goes off, the stopwatch starts. When the finish line is crossed, the stopwatch stops. And when the stopwatch stops, we know who is the best. But do we really? Does that single number truly tell the whole story? Is something lost in using time as a singular reference point for performance? Time as we know it - splicing up a day into so
The Hidden Cost of Our Running Gear
Introduction As trail runners, we view ourselves as stewards of the Earth, spending countless hours immersed in nature, running through desert, woodland, coastlines, and mountains. We are one with the natural world around us. Indeed, we comprise a critical fabric in the web of nature, though too often in the Global North (includes North America and Europe), we tend to forget that through our choices, we
Winterize Your Run!
It’s still dark and you hear the wind howling outside your window. As you crawl deeper under the covers, you suddenly regret not taking advantage of that Black Friday treadmill sale a few weeks ago. Or the Cyber Monday sale that followed. Even with your eyes closed, you know the snow is blowing sideways at that moment. The forecast for this morning calls for temperatures
Rainbow Blazes
I’d already made use of a downed tree to ford a flooded section of trail, then gotten mauled by a set of 6x2 minute hill repeats. It was the first time I had ever sandwiched a workout inside of a steadier effort rather than just the typical warmup and cool down format. On top of that, this was Sunday - long run day - and
The Twisting Branch Part 7
As I was chatting with Addie Bracy on our second mental performance coaching session, after we had our conversation about my complicated relationship with running these past few months, there was a little time left over for me to turn the tables and ask her some questions of my own. I thought it might be interesting or even useful for anyone reading about my journey,
The Twisting Branch Part 6
The first time I met with mental performance coach Addie Bracy, it had been a month since I finished Twisted Branch. I had planned some down time, or more correctly, I deliberately didn’t want to commit to anything for the remainder of the year. I toyed with the idea of doing a solo 135-mile endurance run this fall to raise money for a local charity
