Last week I had a rough run. To meet my training plan, I had to run 7 miles – the longest I’ve run in years. I actually did 7.5 miles, but I didn’t really enjoy it. I picked a scenic route near New Buffalo, and it should have been really nice. But when I was getting ready for my run I realized that I no longer had my hydration pack that I like to use for long runs, nor did I have even a waist pack to carry a bottle. I don’t know why I got rid of all that stuff except I haven’t done long runs in years. I’m sure at some point I decided that part of my life was done, and I cleaned house. Since i ..read more

Day 5: I’m sleeping better. I’ve had five nights of sleep on this program. The first two days were awful, and I was super tired. But after the third night of sleep, my sleep stats are improving. The last two nights I slept through the night. My bedtime is 11:10 PM and I get out of bed at 5:30 AM. I’m not waking up to an alarm yet, but I’m literally waking up sometime between 5:10 AM and 5:30 AM. I feel rested. For the first time this week I felt like running this morning. My sleep coach, Arielle, is working with me on more positive thinking about my sleep. For as long as I can remember, I ha ..read more

Every year I dread the Summer Solstice. Everybody loves these long days to get outside and enjoy life until bedtime. It’s the bedtime part that I hate. My body is so sensitive to light and the heat of summer that my body doesn’t rest very well. I long for the Summer Solstice to peak so the days get shorter and my sleep can get longer and longer. If I drink too much caffeine – at any time of the day – my anxiety ramps up and I can’t sleep. I can go to sleep, but I wake up at 3 or 4 and am wired. If I eat too much sugar or white flour I wake up in the middle of the night with anxiety. If I’m w ..read more

Our friendship began in a cinder block suite in the now non-existent Lee Hall at Southeastern Louisiana University. We bonded over bottles of Riunite purchased with small change and shared packs of Virginia Slims menthol cigarettes. I don’t know why but I fell in love with this grumpy New Orleans gymnast in the one semester that we lived together. She teased me trying to apply all my face creams in a drunken stupor. I brought her tea in the morning while she grumbled and groused about having to get up so early. We both had curly hair that frizzed in the Louisiana humidity and huge boobs that ..read more

I have been running pretty regularly again. I had to get in shape for the Fort2Fort Mackinac 5-miler even though my motivation fizzled out a couple of weeks before. That trip was so fun, and I felt so good during the run that it helped me remember why I loved being in a social running community. My favorite running days were in Memphis when I was a member of Memphis in Motion. I trained for a half marathon and then felt inspired to go for a full marathon a year later right here in Chicago. I joined that group when I was struggling with depression after my divorce, and the running and social c ..read more

You can get your own call sign here! When we walked out of Top Gun last night, we ran over to the marketing signage in the lobby to take a picture. A man was there with his family. He offered to take our picture, and we took a family pic for them. Everybody was laughing and trying to get next to “Tom”. We got a couple of pictures, and I felt a little taken aback at how all that transpired. Was that what the world used to feel like? Social celebrations and sharing joy with strangers at close range without a thought about it? . On the way home, I said a little prayer of gratitude that life as we ..read more

I actually forgot about going to movies in a movie theater. I hadn’t been to a movie theater since 2019, and I’m not even sure how many movies I saw that year. But I really liked going to movies. I would scour the movie listings to see if anything was playing and head over on a Saturday afternoon for some popcorn and entertainment. There’s something about a story on the big screen that puts me in a better place if only for awhile. So this week on Stephen Colbert, he interviewed the actress that plays Penny Benjamin in Top Gun: Maverick. Oh yeah…. that volleyball scene brings back some great m ..read more

It is so easy to feel helpless. My heart is broken over the senseless massacres of the last couple weeks. There’s no need to rehash all the details. Our government doesn’t seem to have the capacity to fix this. The fixation on that route is not prompting results, and yet we still keep focusing on that solution. That’s the definition of insanity. Congress has two jobs – to make laws and allocate money. Unfortunately they have a bigger concern to stay in office so they are more focused on that than anything. And in case you haven’t read the news in the last decade, many of them are idiots. I wo ..read more

View from our Room During the holidays, my friend Michele from Lansing texted me about a 5-mile race on Mackinac Island. She and a couple of her friends were going, and she was wondering if I might like to go. Now this was in the middle of snow season, and I had not been running at all. Besides, we were knee deep in Omicron and I couldn’t yet imagine that we’d be able to get together without fear of sharing a deadly virus. But it seemed like a great reason to get my running legs in action once again. Besides, it’s so much fun to spend time with women who enjoy running and cycling and spending ..read more

I don’t remember when I started using the verb Google to mean “get an answer”. I’m sure I used it first in jest but somewhere along the way it just became part of my vocabulary. My friend Melanie and I were chatting this morning about this need we have to get instantaneous answers, goods and results. I wonder what this is doing to us. Hey Siri, what time is it? Why are people so mean? Did our ancestors eat more meat or vegetables? I used to think it was so cool to call Time and Temperature to get the time and temperature. That was the only quick resource we had. And now I even wonder why w ..read more