Hill work

Tom and I spent all last week with his family at their home on Smith Mountain Lake. As the name suggests, Smith Mountain Lake is in the mountains. Just the name alone speaks of beauty: A lake! Mountains! And it is beautiful, really, really beautiful. It’s rolling hills and sparkling water and sunsets. You should

Read More

Track Club

Track Club

For me, running has always been more about community than winning races or setting PRs. Maybe that’s because I’ve never been super fast, and if that’s the case then my speed limitations are a mercy from God, because running has brought me some great friendships. Even when I was in high school and racing all

Read More

Running: That old familiar pain

I’ve been doing yoga. Runners only do yoga for one reason: they have no choice. Here’s the deal: for almost four years I’ve been dealing with a hamstring injury. I think of it as a running injury, because it hurts when I run, but it’s really not a running injury at all; it happened while I

Read More

Race day = excuse day

Tomorrow is race day, which means today I start coming up with some excuses. Since the day I started racing I started making excuses. Once in high school I told my coach I might have a bad race because I had some pudding for lunch. It wasn’t the pudding I was worried about, it was

Read More

Running: Monument Ave. 10k

As long as you don’t mind five inches of freshly fallen pollen, now is a great time to live in Richmond.  We’re having the kind of weather I’d order off a menu: warm, breezy, and sunny with no bugs and no humidity.  The flowers are blooming, the grass is green and everyone is running. The sidewalks

Read More

Running: now and then

Last night Tom took David for a run in the jogging stroller for the first time ever. He ran 5 miles at a 7:30 pace while pushing the stroller. No big deal. I stayed home and did some freelance work. Alone in the house for almost 40 minutes, it felt like new worlds were open

Read More

Running highs and lows

This winter I’ve found myself falling into some running patterns. Simply, I’ll get on a great running kick…then not run at all. I’m running the Monument Ave. 10k at the end of March, so I started training — running about 4 miles two times a week and 6-7 miles on Sunday, with a few shorter

Read More