Best of 2019: Tama River 12

It happens so many times that I should be embarrassed by it, like Charlie Brown falling for Lucy’s tricks over and over again: I head out for a hard run dreading it, half-convinced I won’t be able to do it. I can think of a half dozen reasons not to do it: maybe it’ll wear…

Best of 2019: Every inch of an Island

Most of the year, I train virtually with my cousin Nick, who lives in North Carolina. It suits me fine–he’s a much better runner with a higher pain tolerance than I have. But from time to time we get to run together, and it’s awesome, reminding me that this sport that I generally prefer to…

Best of 2019: Borghese Dawn

Making friends with your insomnia sometimes means just letting it have its way This morning–on a quick stopover in Rome before flying home from Italy to New York–I crept out of bed as quietly as possible, trying not to wake my sleep-deprived 10-year-old, made one cup of coffee in the bathroom, and laced up for…

Best of 2019: Brooklyn Mile

The day I ran my first 50-miler, Jim Walmsley set a new 50-mile record, running 50 miles at an average pace of 5:48. I wanted to see if I could run one single solitary mile at that speed. This race gave me the chance to try it. I thought it would be a fun little…

Best of 2019: Rock the Ridge 50 Miler

I’ve never been more afraid of a run than I was of this, my first 50-miler. In the weeks building up to it, I kept thinking about all the times I’d gotten to mile 22 or so in a marathon and started getting dark–really, really dark. The thing about a marathon, though, is that even…

Best of 2019: Holiday Inn Treadmill

Not every great run is in a great place. We spent one night at a Holiday Inn in Vermont this summer on our way to drop our younger daughter off at summer camp. The hotel was in a shopping center off of a busy highway–not promising running environs–but there was a small gym with a…

Best of 2019: Santa Monica Trail Run

This is a run I have tried to do every year for 5 or 6 years when our family goes to Santa Monica in March to attend the Kids’ Choice Awards (my wife works for Nickelodeon). Most years I have to get back to the hotel too early to stretch this run out to its…

Best of 2019: Golden Gate Park

For someone who runs most of the winter in New York City, the chance to run along warm wooded paths enveloped in green in the middle of January is a treasure in itself. But this run had more than that to offer: I left from the door of my brother’s toy store in Cole Valley,…

Best of 2019: Antietam Creek 20-miler

20 miles along the banks of Antietam Creek, where I was camping while researching the battle at Sharpsburg. My great great uncle marched his troops from Harpers Ferry to Antietam during the Civil War, so I decided to run that route as a way of perhaps attempting to commune with him. As an exercise in…