Considering it has been a very long time since the last time I wrote a shoe review, I figured I’d make a return for a shoe that has gained a special place in my running life. Over the past few years I have been coaching indoor and outdoor track at my school, but this Fall my daughter made a switch from soccer to cross country, and I have now become a volunteer coach with the XC team as well. Coaching has been a great experience, and one of the benefits of coaching cross country is that I get to run with the team every day after school. I’m fortunate in that my school, Coe-Brown Northwood Acad ..read more

About seven years ago I wrote what I still consider to be my most personally meaningful blog post. It was about my (then 8 year old) daughter, Emma, and how she had just run the cross country race of her life. Emma was never the fastest runner as a kid, in fact she quit cross country shortly into her first season in elementary school, but she had more heart than anyone, and she is exceptionally competitive. It’s now 2021, and Emma is a teenager heading into her junior year of high school. I have been both her teacher, and her coach for track and field, and I’m quite happy to say that she ..read more

Spring is typically an exceptionally busy time of year for me. Between teaching and coaching (track and field, soccer), it’s rare that I get much time to myself. For obvious reasons, this year has been a bit different. Lockdowns associated with the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic have brought life to a halt for almost all of us, and have rearranged lives in ways that none of us could have predicted just a few short months ago. As a high school teacher, the rearrangement of my life has been dramatic. My school was shut down in mid-March, and we managed to transition to remote teaching over a period of abou ..read more

Each year around this time I put up a post containing a collection of Black Friday and Cyber Monday sale links. Basically what I do is spend some time scouring the web for running-related holiday sales, and aggregate them all into a single post – kind of a one-stop shop for runners looking for discounted shoes and gear. The post is typically very popular, and it benefits me in that I earn a small commission from affiliate referral sales at many of the online retailers listed below. You save money, and I get a kickback for alerting you to the sale – it’s a nice win-win, and it helps me to be ab ..read more

There’s no doubt that as I have gotten older, my body has changed. Coming back to running a bunch this summer, I’ve noticed that I tend to be stiffer on the days after a hard workout, and I pay the price if I don’t take days off. I’ve had fairly regular lower back issues, though (knock-on-wood) all has been well in that area since last summer. And I seem more prone to muscle strains – for example, I somehow managed to strain a rib muscle while pumping up the tire of my riding mower – that made it pretty painful to even breathe for the rest of the day. One issue that cropped up a bit over a wee ..read more

There was time when shipments of shoes would arrive at my house from various brands on a weekly basis. Some I had requested, some were shoes that brands were pushing because they were the latest and greatest thing and they wanted to spread the word. That’s how the blogging/review/influencer business works. It’s also part of the reason why I couldn’t make it as a full-time blogger. I always felt vaguely like I was a shill hawking products for big companies. Yes, I did my best to be honest, and not every review was positive, but there was always an underlying fear of being too critical for fear ..read more

On July 4th I ran my first timed race in probably five years, and I’m pretty sure it was the first race I’ve run since I turned 40. I’ve done a few Ragnar relays with friends in the interim, but nothing where it was just me against the clock. The race was held in Bridgton, Maine, and it is a race I have run many times. In fact, it was the first race I ever ran, way back in 2007. The reasons why I haven’t raced in several years are many – employment change, growing kids with busy lives, new interests, etc. – but primary among them is that I’m older (now 44), and just not as fit as I used to be ..read more