If you had the chance to ask anything to a panel of Olympic Marathon Trials qualifiers, what would you learn? Back in February, a week before the Trials, I had the chance to find out when I dropped in on a Q&A session with a panel of local qualifiers at my neighborhood running store, Shoes and Brews in Longmont, Colo. While the runners’ discussions about training specifics like mileage targets and gear were interesting, it was their insights about goal-setting I found most instructive to my own running practice. Only a few weeks later, the running world was turned upside-down as the corona ..read more

In this quick trail tip from Devil’s Backbone trail in Loveland, I explain how I adjust my mileage on a trail to account for elevation gains. The post Trail Tip: How to Adjust Miles for Elevation Gain appeared first on The Running Philosopher ..read more

When I was in ninth grade, I was the classic nerdy outcast. I was the smallest kid in my class, I had thick Coke-bottle glasses, and I was terrified of the slightest glance from any of the school bullies. I was bookish and introverted, and spent my evenings learning computer programming and reading books instead of hanging out with friends – or, God forbid, participating in any kind of organized sport. When I was in school, sports were for jocks. You needed to be big, strong, confident, and often a bit of a bully to excel at them. Sports, to my teenage brain, were both above and below me. They ..read more

In the world of improvisational comedy, a scene begins when someone, such as an audience member, suggests a situation – say, newlyweds watching a baseball game. The improv comedians take off from there, like this: Husband: I can’t believe we got tickets to the seventh game of the World Series! Wife: What an exciting game!  Can you believe – tied in the bottom of the ninth? Husband: And look who’s coming up to bat: Queen Elizabeth! So far, so good. Now, the Wife might respond like this: Wife: Lucky for the Red Sox – she’s batting over .300 this year! The actor playing the ..read more

In the classic 2001 Japanese movie Spirited Away, a 10-year old girl wanders into an abandoned amusement park, which turns out to be a bathhouse for residents of the spirit world. Some are scary, some are kind, and some come in just hoping for a good spring cleaning, trailing detritus and baggage from their wanderings through the human world. I’ve been imagining, these past few weeks, that coronavirus is a sort of spirit too. This spirit has come into my life and those of all my fellow humans, stomping around and making a mess. It’s hard to tell why it’s here or when it might go off on its ..read more

When people ask why I run ultramarathons, I tell them it’s because the lessons we learn during one struggle are directly applicable to meeting another challenge. Whatever challenge you’re facing in life, meeting it an overcoming it will help you in meaningful ways during your next challenge. The post Life Lessons are Transferable appeared first on The Running Philosopher ..read more

I’m sitting in my kitchen on a gray winter morning, lacing up my running shoes and watching light flakes of snow falling on the sidewalk outside. Inside it’s a cozy Sunday morning, and nothing would be better than curling up on the couch with a mug of hot chocolate and watching another episode of Archer. I consider this very appealing option, but then remember the commitment I made to myself to try for a P.R. at a trail marathon in a couple of months. So I take a moment and summon that resource I need to get myself outside: discipline. Discipline is often seen as an essential ingredien ..read more

If we’ve learned one thing from the Fake News era – and Lord knows we should have by now — it’s the perils of bad data. Sometimes, bad data has nefarious origins. We all know where to look to see examples of purposely misleading or downright false information. Often, though, bad data is not intentionally misleading, but is a result of competing priorities. In the Big Data era, our own personal data is a valuable commodity for companies that reprocess it and then sell it back to us, ostensibly in a form more helpful to us. In their urgency to keep us hooked to their product and ultima ..read more

The Running Philosopher’s crack running duo demonstrates how — and how not — to social distance while running. The post Social Distancing and Running in 30 Seconds appeared first on The Running Philosopher ..read more

Coronavirus has disrupted life across the globe and disrupted everything from local book groups to the Olympics.  Something I’ve been thankful for every day over the past couple of weeks is that I’ve been able to keep running. I’ve had to scold a few absentminded folks on the trails who didn’t seem to understand what six feet of social distance really means (and you should feel free to scold them too!) – but not only have I been able to keep up my running routine, but with a week of warm spring weather and fewer constraints on my time, I’ve been able to start to ramp up my mileage. I’ve ..read more