A friend and former teammate introduced me to running long distances about twenty years ago. A few years ago I commented about running a lap of Central Park in about forty-five minutes. He remarked how running that speed at that age was impressive. In the years since, I’ve meant to run a lap in forty-five minutes. Between China and just running long distances for past marathons, I haven’t gotten around[…] Keep reading →

If I did my math right, today is my one-thousandth day of burpees, starting at one set of ten per day, now up to two sets of twenty-five per day. That’s somewhere over 40,000 burpees. I’ve done them in North Korea, China, and across the U.S. Following the principle that if you miss one day you can miss two, if you miss two it’s all over, I haven’t missed one[…] Keep reading →

I talked my way out of a guy threatening me with a knife. Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe the girl earlier in the night, maybe the physics, but something gave me the courage. As we both walked away I kept looking back, worried he might come after me, but he never did, and I went to my friend’s place to sleep. The year must have been 1998 or 1999[…] Keep reading →

I threw away some medals from some marathons I ran a few years ago during a stint of simplifying my life and getting rid of stuff. As far as I know, you can’t get replacements. When getting rid of them I thought, “The joy and value of a marathon is in the running, the training, and the experience. A medal is just to show off to other people. I didn’t[…] Keep reading →

Within the first few steps of this morning’s run, I could tell I didn’t have the energy I normally did. I kept running anyway. I don’t know why sometimes my body has less energy. Sometimes my legs feel like lead. Other times I have tons of energy. I haven’t done a long run, nor pushed myself hard on the rowing machine lately. I surfed earlier this week, which takes a[…] Keep reading →

Scroll down for the picture I’ve held back from posting since this site is mostly about leadership, meaning, value, importance, purpose, emotional awareness, emotional skills, etc. First a few words. I find people’s attitudes toward diet and exercise become self-righteous so I prefer not to bring up diet and exercise in conversation, so I’d generally not bring it up here. Plenty of sites show before and after pictures of people’s[…] Keep reading →

As long as I can remember, I’ve considered the phrase “slow and steady wins the race” garbage. I don’t understand why they teach it to kids instead of useful lessons. We all know the fable by Aesop about the tortoise and the hare from which it comes. The hare makes fun of the slower tortoise. They race. With a big lead, the hare takes a nap then wakes up to[…] Keep reading →