Lately, I’ve been juggling a few different books, putting one aside while I read another, then moving on to yet another one… and then going back to the first one again. I’m enjoying each of them, but none has really grabbed me and pulled me in.

That got me wondering a question I’ve asked here before, and always love hearing your answers because I love knowing what’s absorbing you — what are you reading? What has taken you by surprise, piqued your interest, or otherwise set the world on 🔥 for you?

Especially now that summer is almost here, which is my favorite time to really dig into a book: what are you reading that you’re loving right now, or what books are you excited about? — Terrell

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It’s a little after 9:00 a.m. on the east coast, the sun is shining here in Atlanta where I live and it feels like a brand new day. And I’m really glad it does, because that reminds me of the person I want to introduce to you today, a runner I’ve gotten to know through Substack, .

For those of you who don’t know her, Verity is a longtime U.K.-based runner who managed her own running club for more than a decade. But an injury forced her to step away from running for an extended period, time she spent reassessing a lot of things — which she’s written about eloquently in her newsletter, RunVerity.

I’m always drawn to people who’ve gone through things — who’ve hit some turbulence in the air and been tossed around, and have had to figure out where to go and what to do when “fear obscures the path,” as Mary Chapin Carpenter once sang.

That’s why I’m so drawn to Verity’s story, and I think you will be too. As always, I’d love to hear your story too! If you’d like to share it, just reach out by replying back or in the comments. — Terrell

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So, let’s hear a little bit about you! Who are you, your age (if you’d like to share), where you’re from, what you do, etc.

I’m Verity Wright, 57 years old and live in the U.K.

I set up an inclusive running club in 2014 and closed it in December 2025 after eleven years. I’ve been running for over 25 years and I’m currently rehabbing a broken ankle from November 2025 by writing a book about why women stop running.

What does your running routine look like? How many times a week, and how far do you run?

My running routine has dramatically changed in the last six months, I've gone from running six days a week, three of those days twice a day, with a weekly mileage of 45 miles.

I’m now building endurance back up slowly having started run/walking for 20 mins in January. I’m pleased to say I’m running four times a week now with my longest run of 13 miles a couple of weeks ago.

Were you an athletic kid growing up? What are your early memories of what fitness and health were about?

No, I really wasn't an athletic kid. I was firmly placed in the "not sporty" category at school and to ease the visible exasperation of my P.E. teachers, many blind eyes were turned on my forged "please excuse me" notes.

I left school with a well-honed smoking habit that was perfected on those Wednesday afternoons.

How did you first get into running? Was there something that inspired you — like a performance at the Olympics, for example, or a runner you discovered by watching them on social media or TV? Or was there someone in your own life who inspired you to think, ‘maybe I can do this?’

My dad was a runner, and I used to go and support him at race events. He ran the Everest Marathon in 2002; I hadn’t started running then, but it was there in the background.

Once my children were born, I became more active, throwing myself around an aerobics class, mainly because the leisure centre provided a free creche for my kids.

I’d always wanted to be able to run, but just didn’t think I’d be able to. Then one Christmas in France I went out with my dad, there I was, puffing and panting, trying to keep up with him, but he just said three words: “slow it down.” I did, and I was hooked.

How has your interest in running evolved since then? Do you run farther, or faster now?

Since my ankle break, it feels like my running has come full circle, because where I am now really reminds me of when I first started.

I’m building confidence and endurance again, sprinkled with just a dash of speed to see how it all fits and I’ve entered a few new races that I’m using to benchmark this new, older version of a runner.

I still love it, but, just like when I started, I’m building a new relationship with it, we’re finding out what works with my new routine and I’m developing confidence again, both physically and mentally.

It feels a bit like getting back on a horse that’s thrown you off, tentatively re-establishing those bonds of trust.

For eleven years I ran with the community I’d created, and it was fabulous to have that accountability and support. Now I’m learning to run on my own again and be accountable only to me.

This is new and it’s scary, but also exciting, it’s running in its simplest form; what can I achieve when nobody’s measuring but me?

What do you balance your running with? Do you have a family to take care of? Kids, parents or other relatives or loved ones? If so, how do you balance all of it and still make time to run/care for yourself?

When I had my run club it was hard to fit my own running around the club sessions and family life. I have a husband, two children and three grandchildren, and I used to be out four nights a week and most weekends. Now [that] I can fit running in around what matters to me, running doesn’t feel like a grind anymore.

There were mornings when I was meant to run for me, but I’d tell myself I wouldn’t go because there was always tomorrow, or I’d be too tired to run, so wouldn’t go because I knew I’d have to run with my club either that evening or the next day.

Now, especially after my injury, I know that running tomorrow isn’t promised, so I just go. It’s hard going on your own, I’m not going to lie, it would be a lot easier to stop running all together but, I keep putting my trainers on and showing up.

To help, I run with a friend once a week, and my daughter, which is a joy, and go to parkrun to push myself. My whole running landscape has changed.

Is there anything you’re especially proud of that you can point to your running and say, ‘this helped me achieve ______’?

I’m proud of so much, I don’t know where to begin.

For me, running gave me a purpose, it changed my life and gave me a confidence I never knew I needed. I remember after running my first marathon I felt I had something to hold my head high about, I was a late starter in everything, running, my Psychology degree, this all of it happened in my 30s and running made me feel as though I belonged.

Then I started teaching everyday people how to run, people just like me, who’d been told they weren’t sporty or good enough when they were at school.

Their internal narratives still stung as they turned up on the first night of my beginner’s course “You don’t look like a runner” “You’re too slow”. “You can run; you’ve got asthma”. And I watched what running did for every single one of them as they crossed many finish lines in bodies they’d spent years hating.

I won a Changing Lives Through Physical Activity award which was a wonderful moment. I still get messages from people telling me what they’ve achieved through running. Giving people the tools to do this, to run in their own bodies, at their own pace is what I’m proudest of.

What have you learned about yourself from your running journey? Is there anything that’s changed about you since you started?

I’ve learnt that I’m tough and resilient. Running has been a complicated relationship that at times has been hard to navigate. I suppose a bit like a friendship, sometimes we’ve fallen out and I’ve been angry and frustrated with it, stubbornly ignoring it for months.

And then they’ve been other times when we’re never apart, and the joy and laughter make all the bad times worthwhile. I’ve also been to some wonderful races, and run through breathtaking scenery — the Yosemite Half Marathon last year was a highlight.

I’ve run marathons through the streets of Paris as though I mattered to everyone there. And sometimes I’ve had people turn their back on me as I’ve run past, clear signals of dislike. But I’ve just kept on running. It’s just something I must do.

Where would you like to go with your running? Is there anything special you’d like to achieve — like, say, running all six World Marathon Majors, or running an ultra?

I’m excited to see what’s next. I’m 57 years old and a nanna. Some women my age might be thinking about giving up, well I’m not.

I don’t know what a 57+ women can achieve because the research hasn’t been designed with women like me in mind, so I’m going to try and rip up the nanna stereotypes and just keep going.

Last week I achieved my highest ever age grade percentage in a race and I thought that was cool, so who knows what’s around the corner. More marathons, not this year, but next.

What keeps you going? Especially if you’ve been running for a while — do you ever get bored with it? How do you find new things to motivate you, to keep you going?

I don’t know, it’s just something I must do, it’s who I am and part of me now. I've been doing it for over 25 years, and I've never really got bored of it because it's never been the same twice. Different routes, different paces, different bodies, different reasons.

Right now, it's about coming back from injury and seeing what this new version of me can do. Next year a marathon, just for me. The year after, something else. The running keeps changing because I keep changing, and that's what keeps it interesting.

Look back at yourself when you were a kid, maybe say 10 years old. Remember how you felt, what you thought, especially what you thought you were capable of back then. If you could talk to that kid now, what would you say?

That what other people think of what you look like when you run is bollocks. Don't let their comments stop you from doing something you love.

One of the reasons women don't run is their fear of judgement of what people think they look like. I’ve learnt no matter what you do, people will always have opinions of you.

But if they stop you feeling the confidence and joy you get from running, what would your 85-year-old self regret more? Running with a red, sweaty face or sitting the race out because you don't look like how a woman should look. What, happy?

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Just a quick note before we get out there — and of course happy Mother’s Day to everyone celebrating (and being celebrated) today. The weather here in Atlanta has been mostly gorgeous lately, unseasonably cool and sunny, perfect for running.

I hope you’re able to get out there today and enjoy some of it, wherever you are in the world …

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I started thinking to myself, remembering a time when I trained for a marathon, back when I was in my mid-twenties. A woman who was training with us was having serious difficulty keeping up with the mileage, especially when she joined us on the long runs each weekend.

But still, she kept at it.

Until one long run, when an ambulance had to be called — she’d taken a fall and hurt herself pretty badly. I felt terrible for her, and don’t remember seeing her come back after that.

And I thought of myself, sticking with things in my own life that I knew weren’t working, but I kept at them regardless, out of a sense of needing to persevere — even though I knew they weren’t right for me.

Have you ever experienced this — in running, in sports, or in life? What did you do, and what did you learn? — Terrell

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If you’ve followed the career of former Olympian Kara Goucher for any length of time, you know what a hero she’s been to so many in the running world. (And to me!)

And if you have, then you know the challenges she’s been dealing with ever since she was diagnosed back in 2022 with runner’s dystonia, a rare neurological condition that makes her left leg muscles contract involuntarily, causing her to lose her balance and fall whenever she ran.

The years since have seen steps forward and steps back. After retiring from her marathoning career — and flirting briefly with ultra running — she has since retired from competition altogether, as her condition no longer allows it.

But Goucher’s spirit is still very much alive, in both what she shares in her social media feeds and the podcast she co-hosts with the now also-retired 2018 Boston champ Des Linden.

Thanks to medication and physical therapy, she’s been able to keep running — shorter distances, of course. (Much shorter, in fact.) But that she’s able to run at all is a victory — she didn’t have to give up the thing she loved to do, that gave her identity and a sense of purpose.

But saying “thanks to medication and physical therapy” elides just how difficult it’s been for Goucher to get to a place where she can share an experience like the one above, her longest run in years.

That’s a huge part of why I’m so drawn to her story, why I find her so inspiring even now after all these years.

Of course, I can’t do what she’s done in competition — I’m not even in the same galaxy as her, or any runner at her level. Never have been, and never will be. (Certainly not at age 55, anyway!)

What I can relate to, though, are the difficulties she’s gone through and the courage she’s shown in overcoming them. And maybe — maybe? — that’s something I can replicate in my own life.

One of my favorite writers is Candice Millard, the author of books like The River of Doubt and Destiny of the Republic, about the all-too-brief presidency of James Garfield, who was inaugurated in March of 1881 — only to be shot at a Washington, D.C., train station that July.

In this beautiful tribute, Millard shares something Garfield wrote that echoes to me what Goucher’s past few years have been like:

“I have sometimes thought that we cannot know any man thoroughly well while he is in perfect health,” Garfield wrote. “As the ebb-tide discloses the real lines of the shore and the bed of the sea, so feebleness, sickness, and pain bring out the real character of a man.”

Honestly, had something similar happened to me, I’m not sure if I’d have reacted the way Goucher did after receiving her dystonia diagnosis. I might very well have said to myself about running and exercise, “okay, that’s the end of that!”

But she stuck with it. And in doing so, she’s given us something more special than any medal she’s ever won: she’s shown us what it’s like when the tide goes out, when we get to find out who we really are.

That maybe we do have a little bravery, a little courage down in there. That maybe we can find it too, when we need it most.

I hope you’ve had a great week so far and have had a chance to get some great runs (or walks, or hikes, or rides) in — as always, keep in touch and let me know how your running/life is going.

Your friend,

— Terrell

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I know it’s been a while since you’ve seen me in your inbox on Sunday, which has been a staple of this newsletter for a long time. I’m happy to tell you I’m bringing it back, but let me explain a little of what I’ve been thinking and why I put it on pause for a bit.

For a while, I’d begun to feel a sense of overwhelm from all the other newsletters I receive — not that any of this was those writers’ fault; I’d subscribed to all of them of my own volition!

But they all started to feel like too much, you know? So, I thought to myself, what if I send only one newsletter per week? Would that be enough, or too little? So, that explains the experiment I’ve been doing for the past couple of months.

What I’ve found is that I miss having more frequent contact with you all, the subscribers — because I skipped a lot of Friday Thread discussions, I missed hearing about what you were up to, hearing your thoughts. Even though there are Fridays when not that many people chime in, there are plenty of Fridays when they do, and those discussions are still a ton of fun for me.

Lately, it started to occur to me that a better approach to the newsletters I send might be “mend it, don’t end it” — so, today’s Sunday edition looks very much like the ones you’ve seen in the past, but I hope will be the start of something new, as I evolve and refine it into something new.

So, stay tuned and, as always, I’d love to hear any ideas or questions you might have — in the meantime, I hope you have a great rest of your weekend and get a great run in out there.

Your friend,

— Terrell

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If you’re looking for something to run…

🚜 Mad Marathon + Half. Giant red barns, tall silos, covered bridges, wide-open farm fields and quiet country roads form the backdrop you’ll see along the route at this mid-summer race. If you’re a skier, you’ll find it familiar, as the Green Mountains of Vermont here are home to wintertime ski destinations like Mad River Glen and Sugarbush. The race has earned accolades from the likes of Runner’s World in recent years thanks to its gorgeous, bucolic scenery throughout, and the quaint charm of the small town where you start and finish the race. Set for Sunday, July 12.

🏜️ Monument Marathon + Half Marathon. A starkly beautiful run through a rocky landscape that’s home to historic stretches of the Oregon Trail and the Mormon Trail, this race unfolds through Nebraska’s 3,000-acre Scotts Bluff National Monument, known for its namesake bluff that towers some 800 feet over the North Platte River below. The area you’ll run through has seen people from the earliest Native Americans to expedition parties back in the early 1800s, for travelers approaching the foothills of the Rocky Mountains to the west. This is a small race — most years see only a few hundred runners cross the finish line in all distances combined — which allows the field to spread out, and runners to take in the beauty of the landscape all around. Set for Saturday, September 26.

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Or, do you have a place you’re excited to go run (or walk, or hike) that’s in a beautiful place you’re excited to explore, like a new city, or a national park or trail?

Love hearing what you’re exploring and where you’re going ❤️ — Terrell

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Above all, the best thing about writing this newsletter is hearing from readers just like you, as I love hearing your stories and about where you are in your journey — whether that’s running or your life.

I couldn’t have asked to hear from a sweeter, more heartwarming man than Jim Newton, who wrote to me last week when I asked readers to share their stories with us.

I don’t think I’m going out on a limb to say you’ll be as touched and moved by Jim’s story as I was, and to just imagine what he’s gone through in his life — from going through cancer treatment twice to all the places he’s been through running, both in this world and in his spirit.

That’s enough of me yammering on, though — I’ll let you enjoy Jim’s story. But also, please know I’d LOVE to hear your story too, if you’re interested in sharing it. All you need to is reply back by email or in the comments below, and we’ll go from there. — Terrell

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So, let’s hear a little bit about you! Who are you, your age (if you’d like to share), where you’re from, what you do, etc.

I was born in Elmira, N.Y. on October 12, 1949. An interesting fact is that when Columbus Day was celebrated on its actual day, I never had to go to school. I was an environmental engineer for over 46 years and am now retired.

I still am active as an engineer by conducting webinars for professional engineers on various topics. I offer over 50 webinar topics. I am trying to become a produced scriptwriter and have written many scripts, several of them have placed in writing contests.

I have used my running experiences in many of them. I started running at the age of 28 trying to lose weight. I have now been running for over 49 years and have covered over an estimated 60,000 miles. I have completed 17 marathons, the first in 1978 and most after I turned 55 (15).

In 2014, I was diagnosed with Stage IV mantle cell lymphoma (MCL), an aggressive blood cancer. I have been in remission since 2015 and continued treatment through 2017. I ran several half marathons while undergoing treatment. In 2021, I was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and in 2022 received a stem cell transplant and am now in remission. It is ironic that I used to run marathons for Team in Training, a fundraising arm of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

I am also dealing with squamous cell carcinoma, a result of my many years of outdoor running. I refuse to run on a treadmill; [I’m] always afraid I’d fall off (I used that in one of my comedies). I also sing in various church choirs and have done so for over 35 years and occasionally cantor at mass.

What does your running routine look like? How many times a week, and how far do you run?

I typically go out running around 8 each morning. I cover 3-4 miles a day, six days a week. If I’m training for a half or 10K I will go longer. I actually ran several half marathons while going through my cancer treatment. In ended up in the ER a couple of times for dehydration.

While being treated for ALL at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, I was hospitalized for 30 days. I would walk around the nurses’ station three times a day, 10 laps dragging my IV pole I called George.

George and I walked 3 miles each day. He sometimes protested but I pulled him along. George and I also walked 300 days after my stem cell transplant. In between I had to have an infusion pump and walked the Houston neighborhood. I referred to them using female variations of George (Georgette, Georgia, etc)

Were you an athletic kid growing up? What are your early memories of what fitness and health were about?

I was not an athletic child. I wore husky clothes. I once tried out for my high school basketball team. I had never actually played and pulled a muscle in my first practice. I never even considered track and field.

How did you first get into running? Was there something that inspired you — like a performance at the Olympics, for example, or a runner you discovered by watching them on social media or TV? Or was there someone in your own life who inspired you to think, ‘maybe I can do this?’

As I said, I started running to lose weight. I went from 197 to 140 over the first year of running. I targeted the 1977 Peachtree Road Race. At that time, total entrants were 11,000, a far cry from now. I ran the Peachtree for 15 straight years, now I run the virtual Peachtree.

I had a coworker who would play golf after work. We rode together, so I started running around the golf courses while he played.

After completing my first Peachtree, I thought a marathon would be cool. I was never thought of as athletic and wanted to show me and all my old friends that there were some athletic genes in me.

How has your interest in running evolved since then? Do you run farther, or faster now?

At 76, I am much slower. I ran my fastest marathon in 1980 and completed it in 3:52. I stopped running marathons while undergoing chemotherapy. I intend to return to them soon.

My ultimate goal is to be the oldest US male to finish a marathon. When I run now, I am around 15-16 minutes per mile. I often hear people complement me on my walking pace, although to me it feels more like running/jogging.

I also use the time to pray the rosary, and ruminate on my various stories.

What do you balance your running with? Do you have a family to take care of? Kids, parents or other relatives or loved ones? If so, how do you balance all of it and still make time to run/care for yourself?

I am retired now so most of my time is spent running, reading or writing and going with my wife and kids. I have four adult kids, two boys and twin girls. One of my daughters has three kids. All but one of my kids live within four miles of us.

Is there anything you’re especially proud of that you can point to your running and say, ‘this helped me achieve ______’?

I have completed 17 marathons. Each one has a different story. I ran NYC twice. I ran the NH marathon in a driving rainstorm and developed a blood blister on my ankle. I ran the Rehoboth marathon in 17°F windchills.

I ran the Marshall University marathon and was beaten by a 91-year-old — but was ok with it since he set the US record for 90+ in that race. I ran the Monster Marathon and finished last in 7 hours, but took second in my age group.

The USA Track and Field Association offers an award for runners over 40 called the Pheidippides Award. Runners meeting specific point totas based on the type of races completed, receive a plaque. I have been awarded 10 years of these awards — the tenth is a crystal plate.

What have you learned about yourself from your running journey? Is there anything that’s changed about you since you started?

I have learned that I can do whatever I put my mind to. It just takes perseverance and dedication. Also, as I get older I have a better chance of winning medals since there are so few runners in my age group!

Where would you like to go with your running? Is there anything special you’d like to achieve — like, say, running all six World Marathon Majors, or running an ultra?

I want to get back to running marathons and be the oldest U.S. male to complete one.

What keeps you going? Especially if you’ve been running for a while — do you ever get bored with it? How do you find new things to motivate you, to keep you going?

I am now targeting 50 years of running and maybe 75 years because 50 years is next year. Running is part of my daily routine, and I feel lost when I don’t, although it is not as strong a feeling now. Running offers me the opportunity to pray each day and helps me with my writing, especially when I have a project I am working on.

Look back at yourself when you were a kid, maybe say 10 years old. Remember how you felt, what you thought, especially what you thought you were capable of back then. If you could talk to that kid now, what would you say?

I would likely tell him to open up and be more outgoing. I was always a shy kid and kept to myself. Sometimes it was the result of being bullied. I would have liked to have taken chorus or acted in a musical.

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There are so many more reader stories we’ve shared — don’t miss these:

Do you realize what it takes to travel, to go to the airport in your 50s and your 60s, to fly on planes, to go to strange cities, to go to hotels, to put on a suit, to go out on stage at eight o’clock at night and run around and yell and project your physical energy for an hour in front of thousands of people? They’re trying to kill you. So I have made it into a game. It’s like Mitzi. I’m going to step on you, and I went, “No, no. I’m going to step on you.” That’s the game we’re playing. That’s life. Life is they’re trying to kill you. You get this free ride till you’re, let’s be generous, 43, and then God goes, “You know what? I’m going to move on to the people in their — 16 to 23 and I’m going to give them my best. If you want to hang around, you can hang around, but I’m not giving you anything anymore. It’s on you now. If you want to stick around, go ahead, but I got nothing for you. You figure it out.”

I’ve always loved this, because it captures so well what it’s like as we age. We really do take our health for granted when we’re younger; generally, we’re just healthy by chance, because we’re young.

But as we get older, we have to be intentional about it — which got me thinking, how intentional are you about staying fit and healthy, whether that’s through running or anything else?

How do you prioritize it, and how much goes into your effort to stay as healthy as you can? — Terrell

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Everyone has a story.

Not just the special people, not just the super-accomplished people… and not just the people you saw running Boston earlier this week in your Instagram feed.

You have one too — I know you do.

And I’d love to hear it.

What kind of story am I looking for? Exactly the same kind we’ve heard recently from the likes of James, and Glenda, and Tyson, all of whom are fellow subscribers here at THM, and who shared their stories with us earlier this year.

Don’t think yours is like theirs? Hmmm…. well maybe yours is more like Lana’s, who moved to Texas with two young children (and four Yorkies) to raise her family and has found the time to make running a part of her life.

Or you’re like Alexandra, a self-described “dog mom, a sister, a partner, a friend, a runner, and a writer,” who fits in 25 to 35 miles a week of running while working for a university in alumni engagement.

Or you might be more like Michael, whose life took a nosedive right after high school, when he spent 18 months in prison. But his running has been key to the turnaround he’s made since then, as he’s now a father of five who regularly runs ultras.

(Or you might be more like me, whose story is decidedly less exciting! But still I share it with you on the journey we’re all on together.)

I’d love to hear about your journey with your running/health, the things you’ve learned, the epiphanies you’ve had, the things you’ve discovered. I’ll share them here in this space that we’ve created together, as I know we all can learn from what you’ve found.

Interested? I hope so.

Just reach out to me, either in the comments below or in a reply back to this email. After that, we can schedule a time to talk, or I can send you a list of questions and you can write me back your answers.

(That’s what most people I’ve interviewed for this series have done, by the way.)

In the meantime, I hope you’ve had a great week so far — as always, keep in touch and let me know how your running/life is going.

Your friend,

— Terrell

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There are so many more reader stories we’ve shared — like these:

It’s been quite a journey for my little ceramic friend.

Or rather, I should say he’s taken me on one — as meet up with him I finally did on Saturday morning at the Masters.

But let me back up. Do you know who this little guy is?

If you’re not a golf fan or even a sports fan, you can be forgiven. But if you are, then you probably know what you’re looking at: the Masters gnome, one of the rarest sports-themed collectibles to come along in a long, long time.

He stands just over 13 inches tall, sports an Augusta National quarter-zip vest and hat, and (by some miracle of engineering) even holds a miniature replica of a Masters golf umbrella that really does open up.

I didn’t even know what a garden gnome was until a couple of years ago, when an old friend of mine shared a tantalizing story with me: he and his then 17-year-old son were walking out of the gates of Augusta National, each with a gnome they’d just purchased in hand.

As they were walking, a man approached them and said to my friend’s son, “I’ll give you five hundred dollars for that gnome.”

They looked at each other, incredulous.

“Nahh, thanks,” they replied, and kept walking. But the man kept walking after them.

“I’ll give you a thousand for it,” he said.

That offer was too good to pass up. “SOLD!” my friend’s son yelled back at the man, who then walked over, counted off ten brand-new hundred-dollar bills, and placed them in his hand in exchange for the bearded garden ornament.

When I heard that, you can guess where I was the next morning: in line, before the sun was up, to see if I could buy one too.

You had to get there that early because, as my friend told me, Augusta National only sells several hundred of the gnomes each day of the tournament — and, when you arrive as early as I did, you see just how many people are after the same thing.

Fast-forward to this year, it’s Saturday morning and my wife has joined me in the early, early hours to see if we could be among the lucky few. I’m not exaggerating when I tell you we were out of the house by 5:30 a.m. and in line just outside the gates of the club at 6:00 a.m.

Those gates, by the way, don’t open until 7:00 a.m. And because Augusta National has a strict no phones policy, there’s no bringing your favorite glass rectangle with you to pass the time.

So what do you do? Well, we got to talking with the people we were waiting in line with — a line that easily stretched to two or three thousand people spilling out into the parking lot.

A woman in front of us was there with her husband; they’d purchased a gnome a few days earlier at one of the tournament practice rounds, and hoped to snag a second one.

She’d been coming to the Masters for years, she added, and always had a big order of merch to buy for friends and family members. This year was no different.

“Where are you from?” she asked; I replied that I lived in Atlanta but had grown up in Augusta, just a few miles from where we were standing. She told me she was from Thomson, Ga., a small town about twenty minutes away.

“You’re kidding,” I replied. “My first job was at a newspaper in Thomson.”

She asked me if I knew someone whose name I immediately recognized. “Of course I do! He was my boss,” I told her, adding that I remembered my days working at his newspaper like it was yesterday.

I was in my early twenties, just out of college. This was before we even knew what the internet was, so a newspaper still meant a lot back then, especially in a small community like the one I worked in.

We shared stories about our friend; I remember he always dressed a little like Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird; in fact, I knew Atticus was his hero.

At the time, I assumed from the way he dressed and the way he talked that, surely, he was more than a few years older than me. But last year, when I stumbled across his obituary, I realized he was only a year older than me.

She had seen him just a few months before he died. “He looked really bad,” she said, adding that his face was gaunt and the waist of his pants were cinched to the last notch.

“Not like himself, not like I remember him at all.”

Our mutual friend had died by suicide; I’d always wondered what happened to him and to the newspaper I loved working for. It’s my favorite job I’ve ever had, or at least the one I look back on with the most affection.

A few years after I left, he sold the paper and opened an antique shop. After that closed, I lost touch with him, still always wondering how the rest of his life had unfolded.

I wish I had good news to share; he did have a relationship later and a child, a son who’s now college age. But the years weren’t kind to him, and he experienced a lot of disappointment and heartache.

The man I remember — I use the word “man” now, but weren’t we still kinda just boys then? — gave me my first real job, believed in me and always had my back when I wrote stories about local government leaders that weren’t so flattering.

He’d hired a cast of characters that I still remember lovingly; editors and salespeople who took me under their wing and mentored me, encouraged me, and helped me learn how to spread my wings as a writer for the first time.

I’m still working on how to hold these two thoughts: being sad that he’s gone and for the pain he experienced, while also remembering the person he once was, the zest and exuberance he brought to everything.

I hope I took a little piece of that with me, and with any luck have carried it with me to the places I’ve been since.

And to think, I’m not sure I’d have shared his story with you were it not for me and my wife getting up at an ungodly hour to try to go buy a $60 ceramic gnome, for… “why are we here again?” we asked ourselves as we longed to go back to bed (!)

I hope you’ve had a great week and have gotten some great runs in — as always, keep in touch and let me know how your running/life is going.

Your friend,

— Terrell

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A few weeks ago, I started a new job.

(It’s going well, I’m happy to report!)

But it’s also meant a big shift in the practical realities of my day-to-day life. And so, at least for the time being, my running has fallen by the wayside in a big way.

This past weekend, I was finally able to sneak in a run along the Chattahoochee River, near where I live. It was glorious, the weather was fantastic and I felt great out there, like I hadn’t missed a run in a long time.

But the truth is that I had; almost two months had passed since the last time I ran. I knew it had been a while, but I didn’t realize it had been that long.

I know I need to figure out a schedule when I can regularly get in my runs, but it’s difficult now. I have to leave early each morning to catch my train, and I also get home from work later than I used to.

And lately, when I get home from work I’ve fallen into a routine of playing a little one-on-one basketball with little T in the (tiny!) court/parking space on the side of our house.

There are days when I could get in an after-work run, I know, either on my treadmill or in our neighborhood. But here’s the thing: he’s just a few months away from turning 13, and he’s still asking me to play with him.

“Dad, let’s go shoot some hoops,” is what I hear, right around 6:30 p.m. every evening.

That might remain the case for a while, he might keep asking me to play. But he also might not; I can see already how important his friends are becoming to him, how the world outside our home is becoming more interesting to him.

All of this was swirling in my mind when I pulled up the latest issue of one of my favorite newsletters, ’s , in which Caroline shares the struggle she’s been going through in sticking with her own running routine.

She’s trained for and run the New York City Marathon a few times in recent years, including last year — but has since found it near-impossible to get back out there:

“The third and final catalyst arrived, as ideas often do, while I was out on a run.1 It was my first run in months, a hiatus I chalked up to a snowy winter and various personal commitments. But the larger truth was, I’d grown to hate it.

Where running had once been a safe space, an outlet devoid of pressure, it had morphed into a pressure-laden chore. There was always some training plan I’d fallen behind on, some pace I couldn’t hit. ‘My third unpaid job!’ I’d joke, then fail to laugh because it wasn’t funny. My attempts made me feel like a failure, so I stopped.”

Can I ever relate to this, I thought to myself.

I don’t know how it works for you, but when I get really into something that’s new to me — whether that’s running, or fly-fishing, or even Wordle — my enthusiasm acts like an ocean wave.

Something unexpected catches my eye — like running when I first started, or fly-fishing, or golf, or Wordle — and I feel a passion stir. I read everything I can about it, buy the equipment, scout out places I can go do it.

I see all the possibilities — all the places my new hobby can take me, all the fun I might have. My enthusiasm builds as I throw myself into it, going and going.

Sooner or later, though, the wave crashes on the shore. I need to take a break, get away from it for a little while. I have to wait until the passion comes back; I can’t will it into being. (Maybe this is why it’s hard to do more than a couple training cycles for big races in a single year?)

The things we put ourselves into — that we put our identities into — they change, don’t they? Not just over months and years, but days and weeks.

My feelings, I’ve found, move up and down like the mercury in a thermometer. I ask myself, “is this right for me? Am I that good at it or not? Am I kidding myself? Should I just quit?”

There are times in our lives when we really can run that ultra, or climb that mountain, or… [insert big goal here!]. But sometimes it’s our moment to pull back from that, to regroup and listen to our hearts, and try to hear what they’re calling us to next.

What is yours calling you to?

(As always, keep in touch and let me know how your running/life is going!)

Your friend,

— Terrell

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I noticed it last Sunday afternoon, just as the sun was starting to set.

We were sitting in the stands of a nearby high school football field, watching little T play flag football, his last game of the season. His team was only a few points behind, having just scored a touchdown on their previous drive down the field.

They were playing defense, and T was lined up to guard a kid I could tell was a really good athlete. Sure enough, on the next play the quarterback from the other team threw him the ball, which he caught. And then started running… fast.

From the stands, I could see T try to keep up with him. But the kid who caught the ball had a kind of speed that allowed him to burst into action and take off sprinting, like a blur.

What I noticed next probably only lasted about a second or two; maybe not even that long. As the boy carrying the ball put more distance between himself and T, I could see my little man slow down, bit by bit.

He didn’t give up. He loves being a part of this team; he’s the first to high-five a teammate who does anything good, like making a catch or snatching a flag off an opposing team member’s belt. (That’s a tackle in flag football.)

He even made a huge, field-long catch for a touchdown in his first game. It was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen in sports!… though I’m being a little biased here, I’ll admit 😉

In that moment last Sunday, though, I could see on his face — the other player looked so fast, there was just no way he could catch up to him. I could see the belief drain out of him, even if only for a moment.

You might ask, of course, how could I even know this? The truth is I don’t; not for certain, anyway — though knowing little T as well as I do, it’s a belief I’ve heard him express. And maybe too, it hits close to home because it’s also the way I used to feel when I was his age.

That I couldn’t do what other kids could do athletically, either — that I couldn’t keep up with them, match their pace when we ran laps in P.E. class, or catch them when we played tag as kids.

Why did I believe this? Maybe because another kid had told me I couldn’t, or I didn’t think there was any way I could do things as well as other, more obviously athletically gifted kids could.

Whatever the source or reason, I had made up my mind I wasn’t, couldn’t be good at sports — and I had no idea I’d done that. I wasn’t conscious of it at all, but somewhere in the back of my mind, an idea formed and took root. And I created a narrative that I came to believe, even though I wasn’t aware I had.

Lately, I’ve been reading a book that’s been sitting in the Apple Books app on my iPhone for years, one that obviously intrigued me once, but for some reason I never found reason to read until now: John M. Barry’s Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul.

(It’s a bit of an obscure title, I’ll admit… but I love out-of-the-way, unexpected books like this.)

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We haven’t done one of these in a while, so I thought I’d ask a question I love because I feel like we’re one big group, out there doing our individual things, and this gives us a chance to come together, even if only virtually.

So, how is your running going so far this year? Have you accomplished anything you’re particularly proud of, whether it’s a new distance, a new time, or something really cool/fun?

And on the other hand — have you hit any roadblocks? Anything keeping you from getting in your miles, or taking care of your fitness, the way you’d like?

I’ll chime in too in the comments, but I always love to hear from you — feel free to share if you’ve run a big race you’re really proud of, or have one coming up, or really just anything 😀 — Terrell

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Lately, I’ve been reading The Essays of E.B. White, a collection by the author of the famed children’s stories Stuart Little and Charlotte’s Web. Somewhere I picked up that he was among the best-ever essayists, and since that’s kinda what I do here, I thought to myself, “maybe I can learn something?”

Early in the book, White includes a dispatch from January of 1958 — which must have been unimaginably frigid cold, given where he lived on the coast of Maine’s Blue Hill Bay. The opening paragraph caught me right from the get-go, and I was entranced:

Margaret Mitchell once made a remark I have treasured. Someone asked her what she was “doing,” and she replied, “Doing? It’s a full-time job to be the author of Gone With the Wind.” I remember this cheerful statement this morning as I lay in bed, before daylight, marshaling in my head the problems and projects and arrangements of the day and wondering when I would again get the chance to “do” something — like sit at a typewriter. I felt a kinship with Miss Mitchell and comforted myself with the pleasing thought that just to live in New England in winter is a full-time job; you don’t have to “do” anything. The idle pursuit of making a living is pushed to one side, where it belongs, in favor of living itself, a task of such immediacy, variety, beauty, and excitement that one is powerless to resist its wild embrace.

I’ve bolded the last sentence because… well, don’t you just love this? This idea of pushing “the pursuit of making a living” to the side, placing it in a box where it belongs, so we can give ourselves over to the real task of our lives — one of “such immediacy, variety, beauty, and excitement that one is powerless to resist its wild embrace”?

Now, I mean no offense to anyone who has found their purpose in their job. I know plenty of people who have, and I’m happy for them. (Sometimes I wish I could be like them!)

But while I’ve always worked — since I was sixteen years old, when I got my first job bagging groceries at Winn-Dixie — I’m not sure I’ve ever quite identified with work in the way I expected to when I was younger, and first started exploring careers I might go into.

That can make a person feel out of step, especially in the era we’re living in, which hasn’t changed much since the philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote this essay back in the early 1930s:

Like most of my generation, I was brought up on the saying “Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do.” Being a highly virtuous child, I believed all that I was told and acquired a conscience which has kept me working hard down to the present moment. But although my conscience has controlled my actions, my opinions have undergone a revolution. I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needs to be preached in modern industrial countries is quite different from what always has been preached.

In fact, you could argue this attitude has probably only intensified, couldn’t you? It’s enough to make a person sigh, rest their chin in their hands, and let out a long exhale, wondering how the world got itself in this place.

Truthfully, I do feel more at ease with this now that I’m in mid-fifties, versus twenty or thirty years ago. Back then, I’m sure I felt more of a sense of something being missing; there are so many paths you might take, how do you know which is the right one?

What if you miss your calling? (Is there even such a thing as “a calling”) Can you go back and start over? Would you even want to if you could? Or maybe… serendipity and happy accidents can work out just as well?

Okay, it’s late at night and I’m sure you’re as tired as I am so I’ll wrap things up right here — but I’d love to know what your experience has been.

As always, keep in touch and let me know how your running/life is going 😀

Your friend,

— Terrell

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If you’ve ever seen the 2006 biopic The Pursuit of Happyness, you know what I’m talking about.

In the movie, Will Smith plays Chris Gardner, a medical equipment salesman and single father struggling to make ends meet in 1980s-era San Francisco. He even ends up homeless for a while, racing home after work each day to his son’s day care, in hopes of securing them a spot in one of the city’s homeless shelters for the night.

The movie’s heart-tugging moments always get me — especially the scene in which Gardner shows up for a job interview at a brokerage firm in a paint-splattered jacket and white undershirt; asked what he’d say if someone got hired after showing up without a shirt on, Gardner replies, “he must have had on some really nice pants.”

Since the first time I saw it, what has stuck with me are the moments when Smith narrates each “chapter” of Gardner’s story, punctuating the movie with words that become familiar as the scenes roll on:

“This part of my life is called… running.”

“This part of my life is called… intern.”

“This part of my life is called… happiness.”

Gardner never knows when a new chapter in his life is about to start; events overtake him, sometimes overwhelming him. He’s simply forced to adapt and adjust, and it only becomes clear later that his life is different from what it was before.

You may remember back in January, I shared with you that I’d been laid off from my day job. (As much as I’d love for this newsletter to be my day job, the financial realities of life in 21st-century America say that can’t be the case.)

But things happen. Companies merge and go through changes, hiring a lot at times and then… the opposite. The latter is the circumstance I found myself in, when I got the word my job would be ending.

I was prepared — in my mind, at least — for a long winter of job searching. I had no idea how long it might take, but I knew from talking with people I’d worked with in the past that I was starting a process that might take time. A long time, in fact.

Most of my inquiries about potential jobs led nowhere, a common story for anyone looking right now. But, just like when you go fishing you never know when you’ll feel a bite on the end of your line, in February I received an offer after only a few weeks of looking.

There was just one catch: this company would soon be returning to five days a week in the office. I’d worked from home since March of 2020; I didn’t realize until yesterday that’s been a full six years — almost half my 12-year-old son’s life.

Yes, in my old job I worked a couple of days a week in the office. But going in so seldom made in-office days feel like the exception, not the norm.

Now, I’m up and at ‘em by six in the morning every day; showering and dressing in business casual (whatever that means!) and taking the train into downtown Atlanta. It’s a big change.

Instead of interacting with the world mainly through screens, now I’m a body in the world again. I see, interact with, walk past and work with dozens of people every day. People on the train platform, people in the hotels and shops I walk through and past to get to my office… people quite literally everywhere.

It’s easy to forget this when you work from home. Sure, you see your friends on the weekends, people you know from your child’s activities. But that’s for few short hours. Most of the time, it’s just you and your laptop. You don’t realize how much being away from the world has changed you.

Now, all kinds of new stimuli are coming at me. On the train into work, unhoused people sit a few seats away. (Many when it’s cold, in fact.) When I get to my station, there are convention-goers and corporate travelers, from high-school students all the way up to middle-aged road warriors.

When I walk in the office, I’m meeting an entirely new (to me) group of people. It’s not unlike being a kid and going to a new school, you know? You’re unsure of how it will go… will they like me? Will they welcome me, or give me the cold shoulder?

(I’m happy to report the opposite, by the way — everyone has been incredibly welcoming in the new job, making me feel at home.)

And that makes me realize something else: how lucky I’ve been. A lot of people I know who are job searching right now are seeing only curveballs in the dirt. But when it was my turn to stand in the batter’s box, I got a fastball right over the heart of the plate.

Now, I know my story isn’t in the same league as Chris Gardner’s. Nothing nearly as dramatic has happened to me. But I relate to what he shares with us, describing how one chapter of his life ended abruptly and not knowing when or how the next might begin.

You don’t know how long you’ll have to stay in the air without a net below. You don’t know whether, or how, things might work out. You just go day by day, because that’s the only option.

I hope I can make the most of this new chapter in my own life like Gardner did in his — not nearly as big, of course! But I’m very aware that opportunities for a completely fresh start don’t come along all that often once you reach the age I am (55).

(My wife tells me I worry too much about the age thing, and not to focus on it — which I’m trying to do! You never completely forget it, though.)

Have you ever contemplated, or undertaken, a completely fresh start in your own life? How did it go? Are you doing it now?

I’d love to hear your story. And, as always, keep in touch and let me know how your running/life is going.

Your friend,

— Terrell

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It looked like it had been set up correctly, perched atop a metal stake in my mom’s backyard. Birdseed filled the front tray, while the solar panels on its roof were turning sunlight into electrons as I looked on.

I tapped the button on the white, oval-shaped transmitter; a tiny light glowed green. But it wouldn’t transmit anything; I was ready to dismantle it whole, put it back in its box and ship it back to the merchant for a refund.

“You can’t get it to work?” my mom asked.

“No,” I grumbled, more than a little frustrated with myself. But I decided to take one more look at the directions.

“Let me try this,” I said, faking a little confidence, as I knew I’d already run through almost all of the troubleshooting suggestions in the tiny-print instruction sheet.

So after deleting and re-installing the app on my mom’s phone, which I then re-paired with the transmitter, I finally got them connected — her Birdbuddy was up and running and ready to share itself with the world.

“Finally!” I said to myself, certain that after all the trouble of setting it up, I’d never want to so much as look at it again. And then I took a peek at what it was sending to my mom’s phone.

A small, grey-and-charcoal-colored bird perched on the edge of the red tray, nipping away at the birdseed beneath its feet. It looked directly into the camera, turned its head, and turned it again the other way. Then, as quickly as it had landed moments earlier, it flew away.

In the app, I noticed that you can add friends, who receive a text message every time a bird makes an appearance within camera range. So I signed myself up, and waited.

I didn’t have to wait long. Within just a few minutes — and, it seems, every ten minutes after that — my phone vibrated with a new notification. “See who’s just landed,” it said. “Check out who’s just stopped by.”

Remember, at first I was hugely annoyed by the whole idea of this. Who’d want to set up a camera in their yard to look at birds? Can’t you look at them from the window? Isn’t that enough?

But when I got a look at a house finch looking into the camera and back at me, I was hooked. (The app includes an AI you can use to recognize each bird species; so far, I’ve seen finches, eastern bluebirds, northern cardinals, chipping sparrows, tufted titmouse, and lots more.)

I couldn’t get enough. Every time I heard my phone buzz with a new notification, I raced to pick it up so I could see what new bird species had flown in for a visit.

The app’s AI can even get specific enough to “read” each bird’s face; you can give them names if you pay for the premium version. (I’m too cheap for that! But after a while, you do feel like you come to know each bird individually.)

Each successive alert only whetted my appetite for more. I found myself in a bookstore, scooping up Jennifer Ackerman’s The Genius of Birds and Amy Tan’s The Backyard Bird Deck, a companion card set to her bestselling book (which she also illustrated) on how her fascination with birds first took flight.

A few years ago, my wife and I considered bringing home some backyard chickens. We never figured out how to make that work; what do you do with them when you want to take a vacation? Still, these birds are stirring my interest in that anew.

One thing you can’t see in the photos — but I can — is that the yard just behind the bird in each snapshot is the yard where I played as a kid. This is the house I grew up in, this yard is the one I ran around in from the time I could walk.

Played countless hours, running all around back there, hiding and seeking, throwing frisbees, practicing my pitching… all the kind of kids’ play you can imagine. And then one day I stopped playing back there, because, well, that’s what you do as you grow up. We all do.

Right now, my son — I call him “little T” in these pages a lot — is halfway between his 12th and 13th birthday. My wife and I said to each other just this past week, “you know, we’re about to lose him” — not that he’s going anywhere, of course.

Rather, he’s perched on that edge between his boyhood and his teenage years. It’s hard to pinpoint where one phase ends and the other begins, but we definitely know when we’ve left childhood behind — because we don’t go back, do we?

I know, I know, I know. I did it too, and so did you, and so did all of us. It’s inevitable, and it’s healthy. Growing up means you’re growing. It’s what he is meant to do. That doesn’t make it easy, though, does it?

So for now, even though it’s only for a moment, I can go back there (at least in my imagination) thanks to my new bird buddies, who never seem to run out of interest in the camera — or appetite!

As always, keep in touch and let me know what’s new with you in your running and your life — and thanks for your patience while I’ve taken the past two and half weeks off. It’s been a restful break, but I’m so glad to be back in the groove with you.

Your friend,

— Terrell

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I realize, of course, the irony in writing you a note to say I won’t be writing to you this week (!) but that, in fact, is where I find myself right now.

In my world, I’ve been going through a season of change. You may remember I shared with you back in January that my day job had come to an end; the company I worked for was going th…

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A quick intro: , who writes the fantastic newsletter and whom you may remember shared his story with us back in October, has written a brand-new book titled This Is Running that I’ve just read and absolutely loved. Raziq joined me for a conversation earlier this week about the book, what’s special about the sport we love, and how it’s opening up to more people than ever before. I hope you love it too!

Terrell: I had the chance to read it over the weekend, and it’s this really is running — it really covers the entirety of the sport. But let me just ask, first of all, just tell everybody just about a little bit about who you are, you know, how you come to us and what inspired you to write the book?

Raziq: I’ve been a journalist for 25 years now, and I’ve been running for longer than that, so it feels like the it feel just just from that line, it feels like the natural thing to do. I was born in London, [and] I was a music journalist in my twenties, and I moved here to Los Angeles. I live in L.A. now.

I did a bunch of standard corporate jobs in America — still centered around writing and content and stuff like that, it wasn’t too far away from my training, but I wasn’t quite getting the fulfillment that I had as a music journalist.

So at the start of 2023, I thought I’d start a newsletter, and I was thinking, “what can I do?” Because I didn’t want to go back to being a music journalist. I still want to write about something I really care about, and it’s running. Running has been the only other ever-present in my life.

So I started that, and I called it Running Sucks, because that is a foundational principle of mine. I trained as I trained as a USATF running coach about eight years ago, and one of my foundational principles is that it’s really difficult.

My focus is on new runners, and how and helping new runners become regular runners, how can I get somebody to become a lifelong runner? And one of those things is finding the thing that’s difficult, because there’s always something that’s difficult, and helping them solve that.

And so I called it Running Sucks. Some people don’t get the joke, or don’t agree. I know you do, and that I found that interesting because, you know, I understand it’s a somewhat abrasive title, because we love running. I wouldn’t be spending so much of my time writing about running if I genuinely thought that running sucks!

I found out so many different ways of thinking about running, how people think about running over the past three years. I started the process for this book about 18 months ago, actually, and it’s almost, it’s almost here, unleashed on the public.

What was the kernel [of] the book, the idea that inspired it? What was amazing to me is, like, I feel like there were little pieces and parts of this I knew just from my experience running my own newsletter over all these years, and certainly had picked up over the years. But I don’t know that I’ve ever really assembled it all into a cohesive whole in the way that you do in this book — this really is the world of running.

I’ve come to understand that I follow the Socratic method when I’m writing: very inquisitive, very curious, [and] I have a deep desire to know everything. Which is impossible! But through that desire, I do get at that big picture thinking.

So I think about every facet of running, and I’ve tried to, I’ve tried to include every facet of running [in the book]. I’ve tried to be comprehensive so that everybody can find something in this book — whether they are just running 5K every day out of habit, or if they are training for half marathon every year, or trying to complete the marathon majors, or running an ultra, they will find something in this book.

And I like to overthink (just like Socrates was accused of). But his method, his method spoke to me, speaks to me. And so, yeah, I’m glad you think it’s thorough, because my goal is for it to be thorough.

One of my favorite stories in your book is about Josh Clark, who invented the Couch to 5K app — I always assumed it was Jeff Galloway, or another famous runner. But it was not, it was ‘just some guy.’ So can you tell a little bit about that story?

Yeah, he’s a tech guy. I was talking to him, and he was, he was explaining his thought process. That’s one of the things I love about talking to people, I get to find out how they tick. I always talk to people who have created something great, in my opinion, and I want to find out how and why they’ve done it.

He thinks about the world in terms of strategic frameworks; he’s very, very straightforward, technical, analytical. And so he wanted to get back into running. And he asked himself, how do I provide a framework for myself?

We all know that these couch-to-5K plans have always existed in some shape or another. Google them, and you can find a thousand of them.

But he made a destination for it. And he just made a really simple framework, which was really easy, pleasant to follow through with, and achievable. And he just struck gold… that didn’t make him a millionaire or anything, but it’s a legacy. Everybody knows that name.

If you’re running, and you come across it, you know, your first thought is going to be, well, how in the hell do I do this? It looks so hard. And then you hear that name, “Couch to 5K” and it’s a great entry point into running for someone who’s never done it before.

It’s so simple. It’s so genius. And correct me if I’m wrong, but he also, like, created sort of this community around the app and the route for people who are doing this, and for for new runners, and for people continue to do it.

This was back in the olden days of of the internet, when there were message boards independent message boards per website, [when that’s what] built community. And they built, you know, one for beginners and one for one for more advanced runners… I used my journalistic tendencies to hunt him down, basically. And I was lucky enough that he was happy to hear from me, and he responded. He’s a great guy.

Something else that sticks out in my mind is running culture and running apparel, [which] is a big interest of yours. Obviously, there’s been running apparel for a long time, [but] before it was just Nike and Brooks and they were all very similar, I really couldn’t tell them apart. Now each brand has its own signature look.

It’s really only been over the past 10 years that this new wave of brands has come through, making apparel that is distinctive and fashionable, you know, something that you could literally wear your personality on your sleeve and chest and shorts.

You know, before it was just the big shoe brands. You got your Nike, you got your Adidas, Puma, Brooks, that you just pick up a t shirt from your local running store and say, this will do.

But now you have all these brands, [which] have personality running through them — they have a distinct style, much like a fashion house. So you really can express your personality through these brands. These are just all new things that are available to runners.

They aren’t subtracting, they’re adding — because there are so many more runners now, there’s more than enough slices of the pie. And so, there’s so much more revenue and money flowing through the sport [now], and so there’s space for all of these businesses as part of running culture.

When I started running back in the 1990s, when the really big thing was the marathon — training for the marathon. And now, as you highlighted in the book, the ascendance of ultras and trails has sort of created this new sort of center of gravity.

It is, it is, it’s, it’s really interesting. I think the marathon majors have played a big part in that and really popularizing the marathon distance. I’m with you. I think that half marathon is the perfect distance.

It’s enough of an effort you can let’s say that you’re always at a 10K level, you can then train for for a half marathon in six weeks if you just want to complete it. So it’s, it’s that beautifully achievable distance.

A marathon, on the other hand, is three months of hard work. It is early mornings, rigorous training, rest, everything. If you’re, if you’re a regular runner, it’s not as unattainable as we were led to believe as children, I would say; human nature dictates that we want more, yeah, always faster, further. We want more, more distance, faster times. And so once you’ve completed a marathon, you think, what’s next? And maybe an ultra, is it? You know, the and the allure of trail running is strong.

Who among the people you talked to, were you drawn to the most or the most interested in, or sort of particularly, or surprised you in any way?

That’s a horrible question [laughs] because I love them all equally. I do genuinely find something interesting in everybody I speak to, which is an irritating answer, I’m sure, because it’s nice to say one person was fantastic.

But I can tell you one story that’s that still stands out to this day: Louise Butcher, who ran a marathon six weeks after she had a double mastectomy. That was incredible.

And she runs marathons topless, as a body positivity tool, as inspiration for other women going through the same challenge. It’s a real story of hope, and she’s a fantastic person. I love talking to her. I love telling her story.

Also that was a scoop as as a journalist — I was amazed that nobody had written her story before. After that, she was featured in Runner’s World and on the BBC.

In the book you share a statistic that since the pandemic, over 70% of the people who’ve taken up running or doing it for their health, versus 20% of the people who took it up in the years before the pandemic… there’s been a really big shift in the way people see why they’re running.

Right, there’s a huge influx of runners during the pandemic, a huge influx, you know, we’re talking a 50% increase in the next you know. So let’s say there was, let’s say the 10 million, 10 million runners in 2020 cut to 2025, and that number is 15 million. It was a huge increase.

And a lot of those people were shifted into a new reality upon, you know, when the pandemic hit, and so they were stuck in their homes. They weren’t moving their bodies freely, they weren’t they weren’t going to work, they weren’t going to school. And so they had to do it for their health. That was their primary reason, to literally get some physical exercise.

Also, I don’t like to separate mental and physical health. I think they’re both for your health. And so there was a huge number of people doing it for their mental health, cooped up in their small apartments.

Previously, their apartment might have been just a place for them to sleep and they were out at work and then socialize, especially people, young people in their twenties, for instance, who you know, they go to work and then they go socialize for dinner, drinks, whatever, and then they go home, just a place to sleep and have breakfast before going to start again the next day.

From what I understand since I wrote the book, that stat has shifted, and because those people have really gotten into running, now they’re looking to challenge themselves in competition.

It’s the natural progress. You start and it’s difficult. It sucks for the first couple of years, then you start getting then you start realizing that you’re actually quite good at it and you’re okay. Now I’m going to start running more marathons or ultras or fast 5Ks. So it’s very natural. Humans are predictable.

That’s very true, right? If you stick with it long enough. You’re gonna find abilities in yourself you didn’t know you had. You know, you’re gonna want to spread those wings.

Another chapter I thought was the one on the female experience. And I haven’t seen very many male authors try to tackle this.

It was quite nerve wracking sending that in. It’s a big deal for a man to be writing about women’s issues. And just yesterday, I actually got feedback from a lady that I respect deeply. She is a militant feminist, and she said that she loved that chapter so that that put my mind at rest, because that is still the chapter that I worry about people taking the wrong way.

For a lot of people, a man should not be writing about women’s issues… It’s such an important part of running because women have such a different experience to men, and understanding that and approaching it with curiosity and questioning why women have a different experience.

I’ve kind of had these repeated content themes in in the newsletter, you know, I’ve written about run clubs. I’ve written about social issues, whether that be, whether that be women or or race. I’ve written about amazing stories like Louise’s. You know, it’s a big multi, multi circle Venn Diagram of stuff that I write about. But I do write about those topics over and over again.

I got my started running back in the 90s, and I’m a white guy who lives in Georgia, in a big city, but still, you know, most of the people in my run club were white. I what I thought was fascinating was all the different kinds of run clubs there are right now, like the Skid Row Run Club you profile in the book.

It’s just the same as the brands, none of them are subtracting. So with with this huge influx of runners over the past five years — not even including the ones over the past 10 to 15, years — there’s just more and more people running.

And so there are more and more opportunities to create little communities, because they will hit, they’ll be able to hit that critical mass to be a community, rather than just one person. So, and it’s beautiful. It means that everyone is represented.

Because, you know, back in the 90s, running did have that reputation of being skinny white guys running marathons, and it still does for a lot of people in a lot of places. But things are changing.

We can call it progress and it’s good progress, because including more people — I only want more people to experience running. I love running. You love running. I want other people to feel the same things that we feel learn the same things that we’ve learned.

You lead a run club of your own, right?

I had a very specific idea of what I wanted my run club to be. It’s a Tuesday morning; we ran this morning. I knew that as a 7:00 a.m. on a Tuesday morning, it’s never going to be huge. It’s going to be small group of people who can chat and meet every week that I wanted, and I had that today.

There were five of us, but we all we’ve all known each other for at least two years, and we’re talking about whatever we talk about, and what a beautiful way to start the day. It’s so cool.

Prior to that, I’ve run with huge run clubs, medium-sized run clubs, small run clubs, social run clubs, more performance-based run clubs, the whole lot. And they all have a place.

As I have moved through different stages of life, when I was a single man I could go to evening run clubs and have have a few beers after running a 5K, no problem. Now, with two kids at home that’s less possible. Now I have to do 7:00 a.m. on a Tuesday, and then, then it’s still a mad dash to get them to school.

What do you hope for the book? Who is the book for and what do you hope they take away from it?

I genuinely think it can be for any runner, and it can be for people who read, it can be for people who like, like pictures. I’ve got some fantastic photographers in there, because that’s really important.

We [runners] are such visible parts of where we live. If you’re running, other people are seeing you, even if they’re not joining you, they see you running. If you’re running outdoors, if you’re running in a pack, they’ll yell at you. And so it’s such a such a visual sport.

You know, if you’re playing a team game, you’re going to be tucked away on a playing field somewhere. Whereas runners run through a city, they run up mountains.

Going back to the brands, it’s one of the reasons people like to dress up to run, because they’re running in public or even at the gym. And so I wanted to make it a beautiful book, because with a newsletter, all of my work lives online, right? And so I wanted to make something that’s a physical artifact.

When I got the first copy of the book back in December, I was nervous to see how it looked because I left, you know, I worked with the publisher on the design, but it ultimately was up to them to fine tune the details of how it’s printed, where it’s printed, etc. But it’s gorgeous. It was a 10 out of 10, like I had no notes to send back to the publisher.

I can’t wait to pick up a copy when it comes out. Where can people find it?

It will be out on April 7, and here’s where you can pre-order it:

'This Is Running' on Amazon

'This Is Running' on Bookshop

As always, I hope you’ve had a great week and gotten some great runs in — keep in touch and let me know how your running/life is going.

Your friend,

— Terrell

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First, thanks for all the great thoughts and comments in Friday’s thread discussion; I love nerding out on new running gear and gadgets, I love to see what they’re capable of now, and what you’re using them for.

I’m especially interested to hear if and how you’re using AI for any of your training. The Nike Run Club app has provided a …

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