This fall David joined his middle school’s cross country team. The second he joined the team, before he even brought home his school-issued singlet, I fell head-first into the murky waters of living vicariously through my kid’s sport. Until now I’ve been completely immune to this. As a person who can barely throw — and
Hey there! Where was I? Oh yes, that’s right! I was at mile 13 of the Richmond Marathon, thinking about how there are much, much easier ways to find out that 78 degrees is actually a lot hotter than it sounds. (You can find part one here.) At the halfway point of the race it
Check me out — Mom of four, the Internet’s last remaining Mommy Blogger, and now you can add *marathon finisher* to my resume. Those smiles are giant fakes. In fact, this bent-over, wilted photo is much more accurate: In short, the Richmond Marathon wasn’t at all what I expected. And, at the risk of sounding
It took me 16 weeks to come realize this, but marathon training is going well. For 16 full weeks, whenever anyone asked me about the marathon, I’d exhale deeply, dramatically say, “I don’t know!” and then mumble something about being tired. It’s hard to say that something is going well when you’re tired all the
I’m writing this very important, breaking-news blog post from my couch where I have my feet propped up, and I’m from a mixing bowl full of salty carbohydrates. I’m on week 10 of training for a marathon, so this is sort of my m. o. these days. That’s right, Mom’s training for a marathon. Before
I’ve run (or walked) the Monument Avenue 10k almost every year since I moved to Richmond in 2006. The nice thing about running a race for more than a decade is that it becomes a bit of a marker for your stage of life. There was the first year, when after racing the 5k in
NOTE: I wrote this a few days ago — a glib post about running during the quarantine. I wrote it before running was added to the list of things that are dangerous to do while black. I’ve been running since I was 14 years old. That’s 23 years of running on country roads, in the city, suburbs,
For the past few months I’ve had a standing social engagement on the calendar. As far as I can remember, it’s one of the only times I’ve done something like this in years. I don’t take the kids, and I don’t arrange for childcare. I just walk out of the house like an actual grownup
When I got home from the 8k, Tom was outside with all the kids. They rushed the car and smothered me with hugs as if I was returning from war. Thomas rifled through my bag and found my post-race food. I had two small bags of pretzels and one bag of trail mix. He held
I used to run the Monument Avenue 10k every year, but I haven’t run it since two years ago when I was pregnant with Anna. Coincidentally, I also haven’t run six miles since two years ago when I ran the 10k, pregnant with Anna. I hadn’t trained and I had no one to run with,