My thumbs flew over the screen. “I’m having a hard time,” I typed. “I feel guilty for not being productive.” The ellipses bubble twinkled. “It’s OK, you’ll feel better tomorrow.” Mark was right. I did feel better the next day, but not before an itchy restlessness threatened to consume me in the bright, upstairs room of an old house in the Berkshires. I’d come here for so many reasons: writing, running, and decision-making. When my host had given me the tour of the upstairs apartment, she’d shown me the three bedrooms. I’d picked this one because the late afternoon sunlight flooded the sp ..read more

I had three possible ways I was going to start this blog post, all pinging around my head at 4:26 AM on a Monday morning. But when I opened my “NEWSLETTER IDEAS/DRAFTS” doc a title of a past newsletter from 2021 jumped out at me: “That’s Enough. There’s More.”  I clicked on the title–maybe my past self had some wisdom to offer. It did.  Sometimes the most gracious thing we can do for ourselves is to say “that’s enough” and sometimes it is to say “there’s more.” There are times when we are trying very hard, we’re giving it our best shot, we're persisting and nothing seems to be wor ..read more

I really didn’t want to.  The idea of racing is exciting when you sign up. There’s a little thrill when you enter your credit card number and hit “register.” And then there’s that period of blissful ignorance when you’re training, but not really thinking about the race. It’s just a date on the calendar.  And then the date comes and you realize, yes, yes, you did sign up for a 10K on snowshoes that has close to 3,000 feet in elevation gain. And yes, you have not raced in seven months. And yes, you only have a handful of threshold effort workouts under your belt. And yes, this is goi ..read more

“Fuck you. You can go to hell.” It’s a line I’ve said to Mark in my addiction. It’s a line he’s said to me in his withdrawal.  We don’t fight, not with raised voices. We hold onto things quietly, silently until we’re ready to wield them as a sword. All it takes is one swing to fell the other.  The truth is that we’re two broken people with painful pasts. Pasts we’ve wrestled with in therapy as individuals, talking, talking, talking to peel back the layers of: why am I the way I am? There are times when we’ve grasped the answer, or so we thought. Grounded ourselves in a new truth ..read more

Fresh snow frosts the highest branches, clinging in great clumps to the pines. As the road winds, up, up, the snow grows a few inches deeper with every turn. I am in no hurry. I love this drive, have memorized it from all the times I’ve raced Greylock and Prospect. The fondest memories from five years ago, the year my hair was bleached so blond it broke and fell off, but under the winter hat I wore at the Snowshoe National Championships you couldn’t tell. That year, I finished third, unexpectedly, accidentally, surprisingly, but not without intention. I’d written the lofty goal in my journal a ..read more

“Do you swim? Can you swim?” It was hard to tell his facial expression through his mask, but his eyes looked neutral as if he delivered this kind of news and asked these kind of questions on the daily.  There have been three times in my life when I haven’t been able to run for an extended period of time. The second time, was in 2003 when at mile 23 of my very first marathon I felt a searing, fiery pain pulse through the bottom of my foot and had to walk-hobble the last 3.2 miles to the finish. I’d torn the plantar fascia in my right foot and was on crutches for two weeks followed by a lo ..read more

I teared up like five times during the marathon.  The first was when I thought of Darla and Cooper and their mom, Kristine–a stranger turned friend. And how the last time I ran Sugarloaf I saw her at the start break her ponytail holder just as the gun went off and I wished I’d had an extra one to give her.  The second was when I thought of all my athletes in the first few miles and how I believed in them and in their goals. And the third when I thought of my athletes who had missed out because of ill-timed illness, and how I felt their heartbreak too.  The fourth was when I ..read more

I had three miles left, when I turned around at the twelve mile mark for the final out and back. And these miles were supposed to be my fastest, it would be the hardest part of the run. But I’d already gotten from this run what I needed.  The night before, I’d mapped out a long looping route that would take me along the Androscoggin to the New Hampshire border and then back down the winding river road to Mt. Tumbledown Road where I’d loop around. The route was the fifteen miles I needed to check off the next run of this marathon training endeavor that is supposed to lift me to a new pe ..read more

How do you fill up your own cup? That is the question with which I began the New Year.  I couldn’t even wrap my head around goals or intentions. Mostly because I just didn’t feel recovered from 2021. I crawled into December feeling burntout and used up. My cup was dry. The cumulative fatigue of two years of trying to keep a small business afloat in the midst of a pandemic. So burnt out that I was contemplating abandoning Rise.Run.Retreat. altogether. Maybe it was time for something new? I wagered. So I applied to jobs. Surely that would help me. But before I made a rash decisions I mad ..read more

Winter is coming. There’s been frost on the ground the past few mornings and a chill in the air that signals cooler days are coming. Which means I’m trading shorts for tights.  I am always on the hunt for the perfect pair of winter running tights, so when Title Nine offered to send me their Crash Tight I was eager to see how it stacked up against the tights I already own.  When it comes to winter activities whether it’s hiking or running or snowshoe running, I need a tight that keeps me warm all over. I’ve found that winter running gear is often not designed with the needs of a wi ..read more