I just wanted to let you know I’m going to take some time off from writing to you, so I won’t be in your inbox for a couple of weeks.

Everyone needs a fall break right around this time of year, right? This’ll give me a chance to recharge my batteries and come back fresh.

It’ll also give me a chance to finally finish some of the big books I have on my nightstand, like Steinbeck’s East of Eden, which I just started and only now am starting to realize what a journey I’m in for.

Reading, I find, inspires my writing — just seeing what other writers can do makes me wonder, could I do something like that too? It’s essential for me as a way to fill my tank, so to speak, so I plan to do some big, deep dives into new writers while I’m away.

I hope you’ve been having an amazing fall and getting some great runs in — and, by the way, if you ran New York City this past weekend I’d love to hear about that too!

Keep in touch and, as always, keep me posted on how your running/life is going.

Your friend,

— Terrell

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I’m so excited for you to meet and get to know the subject of this week’s interview Melissa Miller, and there’s probably no better time for you to meet her than this week, just a few days before Halloween, which is her favorite time of the year (and mine).

As you’ll learn, Melissa didn’t start running in a serious way until she reached her forties, but once she did, she jumped in with both feet, running everything from 5Ks up to ultra-marathons.

What I find so refreshing in her story is how she’s been able to weave running into her life, even though she goes through seasons when she’s far too busy to give it the time she’d like — it’s always there in the background, ready for her to come back when she’s ready.

I also fell in love with the spirit of adventure Melissa has embraced throughout her life, living in places as far-flung as Japan and Ukraine — while seeing every U.S. state through her running.

Her spirit and her energy are infectious, and so I’ll stop talking and just let you get to know her too — and remember, I’d love to hear your story too!

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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.

My name is Melissa (age 53). I am a third grade teacher in Southern California. I have worked in the realm of education for over 30 years, which has included teaching in my hometown of Niagara Falls, N.Y., as well as where I now reside in the Mojave Desert.

I've taught every grade K-12, adult ESL (English as a second language), and conducted professional development courses for teachers locally, nationally, and internationally. I was a principal at three different elementary schools and have taught in Ukraine, Japan, and Ecuador (Galapagos Islands).

I also have a unique/faBOOlous side gig working as a scare performer at a haunted attraction!

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

My running routine has decreased exponentially recently. I went from doing a streak of a minimum of 5K per day for over two years, to essentially only running in organized events approximately once per month at the most.

When in character for my role as an asylum patient at a haunted attraction, running skills come into play as I bolt down a dark hallway (which is illuminated only by a strobe light), terrorizing unsuspecting victims.

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

I was always a fast runner when “competing” with fellow children in my neighborhood, but I was quite shy and was basically deemed too short/skinny to participate in any organized sports/teams.

I was very aware of the importance of health and fitness as both were components of the core curriculum where I attended school for grades pre-K through 12 in New York. We even had indoor pools in our elementary, junior high, and high school campuses!

We had structured physical education and swim instruction multiple days per week at school. Weather permitting, we ran laps and played games/sports outside as well.

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 love of Halloween lured me to compete for the first time in a 5K, which was a race in downtown Boston that included a costume contest. That piqued my interest in searching for other themed-races. Some of the most fun ones I’ve done since then included:

• “I Dream of Jeannie” Cocoa Beach Half Marathon

• Cane Field Classic in Louisiana (Actual machetes are distributed to finishers in lieu of medals at this race)

• Various zombie runs for which I’ve been predator or prey

• Several food-themed runs which involve eating throughout the course (donuts, pizza, pierogi, etc.)

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

I started out as a 5K runner and ultimately worked my way up to 50K — although I don’t plan to do another ultramarathon other than the one and only one I did in Texas at an alligator-inhabited park.

I actually didn’t run on a regular basis until my mid-forties. I peaked at about age 48 when I was able to run slightly under a seven-minute mile (for shorter distances, of course).

My preferred distance to run is 10 miles, although it’s rare to find events of that distance. I’m not very motivated by running just for running’s sake and I only run outside… never on a treadmill.

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?

Work-life balance is my biggest challenge for consistency with running. In addition to my actual job(s), I serve on several committees and am an executive board member for our union. I am also vice president of a nonprofit scholarship organization. (All of which is extremely rewarding, yet very time-consuming).

I have two furbabies — my miniature dachshunds named Carmella Macchiato and Thor — and a sun conure (a bird) named Marley. As for forms of self-care, I am a member of a meditation group consisting of participants from around the globe and we “meet” twice per week via Zoom for sound baths, etc.

A fun fact: my dog Carmella Macchiato is also a runner! She is a champion dachshund racer and has also competed in human 5K races with me! (My shy pup Thor prefers to roll in a stroller!)

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

The running accomplishment of which I am most proud is how I set and achieved a goal which I created for myself called “Fifty by 50”: I ran a race in all fifty states by my fiftieth birthday!

I wish these had all been races of the same distance, but I didn’t consider that until I had already completed about twenty of them. (The majority were half marathons). Concurrently, I ran countless races in California and neighboring states.

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 running is very therapeutic for me and the roads and trails I’ve trotted upon and along have been sprinkled with a lot of my tears. I don’t listen to any music while running, other than if it happens to be playing along a course via disc jockeys, bands, or the earbuds of fellow runners who happen to be nearby.

I process a lot of emotions in my head with each step. In recent years, I’ve encountered a lot of loss, including the recent death of my father due to Alzheimer’s.

I used to create photo calendar books to chronicle my running adventures to share with him and I found out that he was my biggest running fan when he told me that he had even showed those books to his dental hygienist!

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?

As cliché as it sounds, I truly would love to qualify for the Boston Marathon. Being that I have been slacking on running on a regular basis for practice, it’s doubtful I’ll ever attain that status unless I get serious and do another running streak. Running some sort of race on each continent is another aspiration.

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 very motivated by trail running. Some of my favorite running events have taken place on scenic courses of rural areas. I love nature and it’s fun to share the trail with critters amidst trees, flowers, waterfalls, etc.

I get very bored running in my own neighborhood. The grueling heat of the desert and frequent inhalation of wildfire smoke also squelches my enthusiasm and hinders safety.

Although she is decades younger than me (and way more skilled than I could ever dream to be), I am truly inspired by runner/blogger and by you as well, Terrell. You both have captivating, (albeit different), writing styles. You exude competence in running and writing and I appreciate your candor. Additionally, you connect runners to such interesting and motivational resources.

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 never would have imagined that I could run such far distances as I do. I’d love to tell that much younger me that she should sign up for the track team in junior high, high school, and perhaps even college. I’ve placed for my age group as recently as the past two weekends at a half marathon and a 10K.

If I became a real runner in my youth, I can only imagine what more I could have achieved! I also would tell her to get involved with performing arts as I absolutely adore public speaking now… especially on stage which is the polar opposite of how I felt as a timid child.

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It was last Saturday afternoon. I was sitting in the chair at the barber shop where I get my hair cut, listening to the stylist tell me a story about her husband. She had almost finished when I heard something… unusual.

“Hm,” she said, not saying anything for a moment or two.

You know that sound, when someone’s a little surprised by something? “Hm.” That’s exactly how it sounded.

I looked in the mirror, a little puzzled, as she took a long look at what from the reflection appeared to be the side of my head.

“Hmmmmmmm….” I heard, a little longer pause. And then she spoke up.

“We’re gonna wax those ears, right, honey?”

Inside, my ears perked up. What? I thought to myself… what do you mean, wax my ears? What exactly even is that?

But then, I assured myself, this must be something new they’re doing. And every customer is probably trying it out, right? So what could be the harm?

“Sure, sure,” I said, acting like I’d done this a thousand times. “Let’s do it.”

And with that, she walked to the back of the barber shop, leaving me alone for a couple of minutes to ponder whether I’d made a huge mistake or not. Just when I was starting to re-think things, I saw her walk back out toward me, pushing a small cart with a machine on top.

This, I’d learn, was the wax machine — the machine that warms it up and keeps it hot, right before it gets applied to your skin.

The stylist opened it up and took what looked like a popsicle stick and dipped it in the warm, pinkish wax, curling it around a bit before she let a drop or two fall back in. Then she brought it over and — gently, to be sure! — set it just inside my ear.

“Wow,” I said, reflexing at the hot substance. But again, I’d never experienced anything like this before, so… I was a little antsy. (Maybe more than a little!)

She dipped a few pieces of tissue-like paper in the wax and applied them to the outside of each of my ears, and then dipped another popsicle stick in, pulling it out and then placing it in my other ear.

Friends, I wish I’d had the presence of mind to snap a photo of myself sitting in that chair: a pair of popsicle sticks protruding from each ear, both draped in wax-soaked paper. If only you could’ve seen me!

Of course, if you’ve ever had a wax, you know what comes next.

“OUCH!” I actually didn’t say it out loud, but I felt myself wince a little each time she ripped away a piece of the waxy paper. And ripped again, and again, and again.

Finally, she was done. I felt a wave of relief and breathed a little sigh; I think she noticed, as she said, “I know you probably weren’t expecting that when you walked in here, but I just couldn’t let you go out of here today with those little fuzzies.”

Now, I know sharing all of this with you may be a little… odd. (Just a little while ago, I told my wife I was writing a newsletter about getting my ears waxed and she gave me a quizzical “hmmmm….”)

But… sometimes you just have to shake things up, even the small things. Sometimes you gotta try things you never have, you know?

If you remember the famously hilarious episode of Seinfeld titled “The Opposite,” then you remember Jason Alexander’s George at the coffee shop, stopping himself after he realizes he’s ordered his usual — tuna on toast, with coleslaw and a cup of coffee — one too many times:

“Yeah. No, no, no, wait a minute, I always have tuna on toast. Nothing's ever worked out for me with tuna on toast. I want the complete opposite of on toast: Chicken salad, on rye, untoasted ... and a cup of tea!”

To which Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s Elaine sarcastically replies, “Well, there’s no telling what can happen from this.”

I know, I’m laughing too. (I love that episode.) And the thought must have been on my mind over the past week, because I stumbled on something else that’s new and fun, that I haven’t been able to get out of my mind: Olivia Rodrigo’s new album, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love.

A friend of mine at work recommended it. “Just give it a listen,” she told me. Had it been any other time, I would’ve dismissed it. “This is for someone my daughter’s age,” I’d have told myself. I have loads of music from my own generation to listen to, right?

For some reason, though, I said, “why not?” So I found the album on Spotify, pressed play, and listened to the first song, “drop dead.” (Which is amazing.) And then “stupid song,” and “honeybee,” and on and on and on.

When I made it to the end, I realized what all the fuss is about — the energy, the emotion, the ecstatic-ness of what I was hearing. It all hit home.

The album made me think: when was the last time you came across something — a book, a movie, an album, an artist — that totally surprised you, in a good way? That moved you, even if you didn’t quite understand the lyrics?

I had a feeling I might not be the only person who’s reacted this way, so I shared my thoughts on Threads and found there are plenty of people out there my age who fell in love with the album too, in an unexpected way:

I mean, just read the comments in that thread — it was just the coolest thing to stumble across this little subculture of people my age who are into the music, getting joy out of something completely unexpected.

This post has already come to a place where it’s long enough, so I’ll sign off. As silly as it is — and believe me, it’s not lost on me how silly this post is! — I think we need things like this.

The world’s pretty heavy right now. Really heavy. We need little moments like this, if only for a short relief. The world comes inside our doors often enough; I think it’s okay to shoo it away sometimes too, and just have fun.

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

Your friend,

— Terrell

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I hope you’re waking up to a wonderful morning wherever you are in the world. Fall is finally here in Georgia, with temperatures in the 40s and 50s in the mornings. At long last, we’re getting the weather we’ve been dreaming of since mid-August.

I know I haven’t sent you a Sunday issue in a while, as to be honest I’m still trying to f…

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I know a lot of us — all of us, maybe? — run for the physical benefits. Especially if we’ve been running for some time, we know it helps us feel better, look better, feel stronger.

But what I’ve always loved about the way running makes me feel is the way it expands my sense of possibility — how it stretches what I think I can accomplish, and makes me think, “huh, maybe I can do that” about things in my life that have nothing to do with the sport itself.

Do you feel the same way? Is there anything your running has inspired you to take on — a new goal, a big life change, anything?

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It’s nighttime, I know, so I won’t dilly-dally too much other than to say, I can’t wait for you to meet this week’s interview, Matt Massett.

Maybe it’s because we’re the same age (55), or maybe it’s because we’re at the same stage in our careers, or maybe it’s because we have children of similar ages, but so much in his story resonated with me.

Matt has been through ups and downs — as he puts it, he was once “a 300‑pound drunk who smoked,” for whom anything athletic was a distant dream. But he didn’t let it stop him.

I’ll let Matt tell the rest of his story, which I know you’ll love too — as always, keep in touch on how your running/life is going. — 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.

My name is Matt Massett. I was born in Chicago and still live in the suburbs. I’m fifty‑five years old, married, with three children — ages 25, 10, and 4 — and they’re the reason behind anything I do.

I work from home as an IT infrastructure supervisor, with thirty years of liking computers more than humans.

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

I run three to five times a week, depending on what I’m training for. I like to pick at least one race a year just to have something on the calendar. My recovery runs are usually about 30 minutes or 5K, whichever comes last.

Running is my happy place. I love early morning solo runs — clearing my head, cooling down while catching up on my phone, doing my devotionals, then tai chi in the undeveloped strip mall area behind my subdivision. If not outside, I’m on the treadmill in my basement.

Two years before COVID, I ran my first 5K. The year after that, I ran my first 10K. And during COVID, I ran my first virtual half marathon — in forty‑foot circles in my basement, switching directions every ten minutes.

I’m a late bloomer. I’m 13 years clean and sober now, but before that I was a 300‑pound drunk who smoked. Running wasn’t exactly accessible. My sobriety date and the moment I started seriously running are no coincidence.

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

Oh my, no. I loved recess and kickball, and pickup football and basketball at the park, but even in the 70s and 80s I was a video gamer — happiest on the couch.

I started lifting weights toward the end of high school, but didn’t get serious until my first child was born [when I was] thirty. That’s when I first tried running. I wanted to be a runner long before I ever actually tried.

I was a burnout in high school — long hair, heavy metal, trouble. No sports. My family joked, “Those who cannot do, teach. Those who cannot teach are custodians. After that, well, we always need gym teachers.”

Growing up with that didn’t make me athletic. My dad still warns me that working out makes you a “slave to your body.” My family believes running empties some internal tank that can never be refilled.

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?’

I was 300 pounds and out of shape mentally and physically. When my first child was born, I realized it wouldn’t take a serious athlete to take my child out of my arms and run away — and I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.

That scared me.

I also had this long‑simmering fantasy of running a marathon. I wanted to be a runner. I didn’t know what that meant back then — I just thought saying “I run marathons” sounded cool.

It’s been a long uphill battle to become a runner. But I feel like I’m in the best shape of my life and have at least another fifty‑five years to go.

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

Much farther and faster. Every new year I’m shocked I’m putting on more miles and shaving down race times.

How I run has evolved too. I laugh at the things I used to think I had to bring on a run. Now it’s just shoes, shorts or tights, a shirt or two, a hat, music, and a good tracker.

After cataract surgery, UV‑blocking sunglasses became mandatory. My phone armband is three years old and probably two years past being functional for an ultra‑sweaty guy like me.

Last year I had hernia surgery and couldn’t wait to get back out. As soon as I was cleared for walks, I was out for hours. Then the weighted vest. Then the first run. Then a couple weeks off because it was too soon. But it worked out — within two months I ran a 10K and joked that hernia recovery was just training.

My addictive personality — the one that earned me “if some is good, more is better” on my tombstone — just moved from smoking, drinking, and drugs to running.

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?

Family, definitely. Work gets in the way less and less. I’m at a point in my career where I can show up late to a meeting in sweaty running clothes and people applaud my dedication.

My wife is the most supportive person I’ve ever had in my life. She pushes me to run, train, and race because she knows it’s what I need to be me. She’s training for a 5K now and has run races herself over the years.

When our daughter was a baby and my wife needed sleep, I trained for months in the basement while my daughter talked and played in her playpen. Those runs weren’t glamorous, but they were ours.

I’m not saying it’s sacrifice. I’m saying my wife and children are the only things that ever move my running schedule.

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

I’m coaching my 10-year-old’s football team and my 4-year-old’s soccer team. I never would have done that without running.

Running led me to running apps, Nike Run Club especially, and that led me to listening to actual running coaches. I wanted that — after being coached for years — to be a coach.

I want to motivate and coach someone until I’m out of a job and they can coach themselves. It’s more than sports. I want to hear their stories. I want them to hear mine. I want to laugh and cry and run.

I went from anti-social, anti-jock, spit-on-the-ground-when-someone-mentions-coach to wanting to be that person.

Running alone so much made me realize I need more people, not fewer, to share running with. Lately I’ve even started thinking about organizing a running group in my subdivision. That’s not something the old version of me would have ever considered.

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

I care about myself. I get healthy and want to get healthier. My mental health improves and I don’t need to sabotage that.

I share more with people now. I’ve talked to myself so much while running that talking to others like they’re not strangers feels natural.

Running gives me connection — even through solo runs.

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’d like to run an actual marathon. Running an official half rattled me — I’ve run longer, but not in a race. Something about the race setting threw me.

I want to keep running until I can’t. And even then, I want to push it.

I’m never going to win a race, and I’m good with that. At some point, I want to have the best time for my age at 120.

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 wander away from running sometimes and don’t realize it until systems start acting up — physical and mental.

Some winters I lean into gaining weight and start lifting heavy. That’s gotten harder, partly because I get distracted by some run or another.

I have to psych myself up some mornings. Weather can be too windy, cold, hot, snowy, humid. I’ve gotten better at telling myself to at least try. It’s okay to quit early if I need to.

But a hot morning, sun coming up, going on a long run — that’s heaven.

At the end of some runs, I trick myself: pick a tree or pole and run to it. When I get there, be honest — if I can keep going, I do. If I stop, it was meant to be.

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 think about this a lot, especially with a 10‑year‑old son now. I see so much of myself in him — his attitude, how he acts.

I’d tell myself to enjoy being a kid more. A lot of us felt like we needed to behave and discover adult things too early.

I’d tell myself to focus. To find my voice. To find the things I wanted to define me. I was capable of so much, but I thought being capable was enough to get credit.

I saw Rush this year, and during the tribute to Neil Peart, there was footage of him saying he realized at 16 that drumming was his “thing.” I was jealous. I wish I’d found running at 16. I wish it had been my thing sooner.

I know dwelling on that isn’t good for my sobriety, so I don’t ruminate. But I definitely know I would’ve loved to get that message at ten.

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I have a confession to make.

I’ve been in a bit of a funk. Not for any reason — or any reason I can put my finger on, really. Just, an overall feeling of something being not-quite-right, not quite enough.

I haven’t been approaching my running with the kind of energy and enthusiasm I’m used to. To be honest, I haven’t been approaching anything with the kind of energy and enthusiasm I’m used to.

Not that I like feeling this way; I don’t. But it just arrives sometimes, like a fog rolling in across a meadow. It seems like there’s nothing I can do to prevent it, and really no choice but to wait for it to subside.

Or at least that’s the way I’ve always handled it throughout my life.

But a time comes when you get tired of feeling that way, you know? When you don’t want to wait for the malaise to lift on its own. When you want to take the wheel of your own life back, and start steering again.

You may remember the 1990 Kevin Costner movie, Dances With Wolves. One of my favorite scenes comes in the first hour — of three; it’s a long movie! — when Costner’s Lt. John Dunbar has arrived at Colorado’s Fort Sedgwick, in what in the 1860s would have been the edge of the western frontier.

Things aren’t going well. He thought the west would be the dream he’d long imagined; as he told the army major who signed his papers to travel there, “I want to see the frontier… before it’s gone.”

Instead, life at the fort is a backbreaking day-in, day-out slog of trying to piece together some semblance of a shelter, while the kids from the nearby native American tribe steal his horse and he’s harassed again and again.

Finally, a light goes off in his head:

“I realize now that I have been wrong. All this time I have been waiting. Waiting for what? For someone to find me? For Indians to take my horse? To see a buffalo?”

We see Dunbar shine his boots and the buttons on his dress jacket; on his bed lies his journal, in which he’s been narrating the story we see on the screen. He picks at the lint on his jacket and brushes away the smudges.

And then we hear the lines that really speak to me, even now after all these years:

“Since I arrived at this post I have been walking on eggs. It has become a bad habit and I am sick of it. Tomorrow I will ride out to the Indians. I do not know the outcome or the wisdom of this thinking. But I have become a target, and a target makes a poor impression. I am through waiting.”

That moment comes for all of us at some point, right? When we’re just… done. With indecision, with doubt, with feeling less than. With whatever it is that’s been holding us back, with whatever has been keeping us from moving forward.

There’s another quotation I love that I’ve shared with you before in an old issue. (Though it’s been many years — I went searching in my archive for it but couldn’t find it, so now it exists only in my memory!)

It’s from a passage by William Hutchison Murray, a Scottish mountaineer and writer who died back in 1996 at age 83, and achieved worldwide fame for his books detailing his adventures climbing peaks throughout Scotland and the Himalayas.

In his 1951 The Scottish Himalayan Expedition, Murray writes of the emotional state — the fear, really — we all feel sometimes. He doesn’t judge the feeling, but he does point the way to moving past it:

“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too.

All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.

I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets: ‘Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.’”

I love, love, love these words. They’re what I needed to hear as I write this to you, maybe they’re what I’ve been needing to hear for quite a while now. (Maybe you too?) We all hit bumps in our lives, we all drift sometimes. But it feels good to recognize when that’s happening and to decide to finally take charge of your feelings, your emotions, your direction in life, you know?

I think I’m finally ready to do that, after a period of not feeling that way for a while. The reason I wrote this to you tonight is that I’m writing it to myself in a way — so tomorrow, I can wake up fresh with a clean, blank slate.

Let’s go out there and get it together tomorrow, shall we?

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

Your friend,

— Terrell

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Morning, friends! ☀️

We’re close to reaching the halfway point of our training schedule (if you’re following the 12-week plan) and are roughly a third of the way through if you’re following the 16-week plan.

Which means this is a good time to ask: how’s it going? If you’re following the plan, how are you feeling? How is it working for you? Any hiccups? (Like the “false fall” we’ve experienced in Atlanta recently, though cooler temperatures look like they’re on the way back again this week.)

Keep me posted! And now, here are this week’s miles:

For the 12-week plan:

• Monday, Oct. 5 — off 👏

• Tuesday, Oct. 6 — 4 miles/40-45 minutes

• Wednesday, Oct. 7 — 4 miles/40-45 minutes

• Thursday, Oct. 8 — 4 miles/40-45 minutes

• Friday, Oct. 9 — off

• Saturday, Oct. 10 — 8 miles/80-85 minutes

• Sunday, Oct. 11 — 3-4 miles/30-45 minutes

The 16-week plan:

• Monday, Oct. 5 — off

• Tuesday, Oct. 6 — 5 miles/50-55 minutes

• Wednesday, Oct. 7 — off

• Thursday, Oct. 8 — 5 miles/50-55 minutes

• Friday, Oct. 9 — off

• Saturday, Oct. 10 — 7 miles/70-75 minutes

• Sunday, Oct. 11 — 2-3 miles/20-35 minutes

The 10-mile training plan:

• Monday, Oct. 5 — off

• Tuesday, Oct. 6 — 4 miles/40-45 minutes

• Wednesday, Oct. 7 — off

• Thursday, Oct. 8 — 4 miles/40-45 minutes

• Friday, Oct. 9 — off

• Saturday, Oct. 10 — 6 miles/60-65 minutes

• Sunday, Oct. 11 — 2-3 miles/20-35 minutes

As always, I’d love to hear how your running/life is going 👍

Your friend,

— Terrell

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A couple of weekends ago, I was in Athens, Ga., with Mrs. T, visiting our daughter for her last college parents’ weekend. (Which is crazy to think about, as I feel like we just drove her up there on a sweltering August day to move her into her freshman dorm.)

On Sunday afternoon, we stopped by an antiques mart, where I found an easy chair to sit in while they strolled the aisles. Sitting there, scrolling my phone (of course), I looked up and saw a young mom and dad at the checkout counter, pushing a stroller with their one-year-old in tow.

Their baby was adorable, wearing a black-and-white polka-dotted onesie and smiling up at the woman working the register, who was making faces for her as she rang up their purchases.

Whenever I see babies now, my mind catapults back to when little T was a baby, when I was doing exactly what those parents are doing now. And that’s exactly where my mind was when something else came into view.

A couple in their eighties — a woman in a wheelchair being pushed by her husband — slowly walked past me. For a moment I had both of them in my sight: the baby in the stroller and the woman in the wheelchair, each being pushed by someone they loved.

It only lasted for a second or two; after that, the couple in their eighties had passed me, on their way to browsing the store themselves. But I couldn’t help wondering what stories the woman in the wheelchair might be able to tell me, and what adventures the baby in the stroller might have someday.

That’s (kind of) a long way of saying, I’d not only love to hear their stories — I’d love to hear yours too.

Over the past year and a half or so, I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing a couple dozen of you already: Rosalie and Erinn, Ken and Chanse, Edith and Sam, and so, so many others.

You might not think you have an interesting story to tell. That’s what Thu Nguyen believed, when she asked me to “really promise that excitement is not the required vibe from a running story.”

Turns out, hers is one of the best-loved interviews I’ve done so far, as both I and many of you fell in love with her sweetness, her sincerity, and hearing about how she’s forged the unique life she’s now living.

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. Interested? I hope so.

Just reach out to me, either in the comments below or in a reply back to this email and we’ll go from there.

I really, truly do hope that you’ll consider sharing your story — I’m sure it’s more interesting that even you think.

Your friend,

— Terrell

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

Morning, friends! ☀️

First, how did your miles over the weekend go? Are you starting to feel like you’re in the groove now? Are the miles coming easily, or is there anything you’re struggling with? (Remember, running at a conversational pace — not all out, all the time — is a good rule of thumb.)

Second, it was really cool to hear about some of the races you’re planning on running this fall; you shared some truly amazing runs you have coming up, everything from 5Ks and 10Ks to full marathons and even a few 100Ks (!). Seriously, the ambition just blows me away.

Here are our plans to get you ready for a half marathon by Thanksgiving or by late December, whichever you prefer/feel up to. Remember, don’t sweat it if you need to skip a day here and there; these plans are laid out so you can pick right up where you left off.

Don’t hesitate to reach out and let me know how it’s going — and, here are our miles for the upcoming week:

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Have a race/event on the calendar this fall you’re looking forward to? Where will it take place, and how is your training going?

And, if you’re struggling with something and need some help, you’ve come to the right place 😀 — Terrell

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Have you ever walked into a bookstore, ambled through the aisles for a while, and then your eyes happen to spot a book that makes you feel like time has stopped? Like you’ve been waiting to find it your whole life?

This past weekend, I traveled with my wife to Athens, Ga., to visit our daughter for parents’ weekend at UGA. We spent Sunday morning lazily wandering the neighborhood there known as Five Points, where I found a small bookstore named Ghost.

There, on the shelves at the back of the store, I happened upon a slim nonfiction book titled The Philosophy Cure, by a writer named Laurence Devillairs, who I’d later learn is the dean of the Faculty of Philosophy at the Institut Catholique de Paris in France.

I sat myself down in one of the store’s plush, comfy leather couches — with that slick-yet-soft surface that’s oh-so-easy to sink into — and started reading the first few pages.

Right away I was struck by the author’s angle: that philosophy isn’t something abstract, to merely ruminate about in the comfort of a lecture hall. On the contrary, she says, it’s a kind of medicine: “It even has the power to cure. But the question is knowing what it is that we are being cured of.”

Ahhh… well. Turns out, that’s a really big question for each of us, and a hard one to answer. In fact, it’s so hard that we shy away from it; it’s so much easier to tune out by scrolling social media or becoming caught up in the busy-ness of our lives. We’d rather push it off, thinking that someday we’ll get to those big questions — but there’s just too much urgent and immediate to worry about right now.

That’s a trap, Devillairs says. Recalling the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates and perhaps the most famous two words he ever spoke — “know thyself” — she says it’s critical for each of us to take the time to get to know ourselves; that we’re more than the sum of our actions and behaviors:

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Morning, friends! ☀️

Something I’ve been thinking about is that maybe it would be better if I shared each week’s miles with you at the start of the week, rather than the middle like I’ve been doing. So, look for these every Monday from today through the rest of the year.

With that in mind, below are the miles to run each day this week with off days listed — you won’t be running every day. If you’re following one of these plans, I’d love to hear how it’s going for you.

They’re designed to get you ready for a half marathon by Thanksgiving or by late December, whichever you prefer/feel up to. Don’t sweat it if you need to skip a day here and there; these plans are laid out so you can pick right up where you left off.

How did your miles go last week? Let me know — and, here are our miles for the upcoming week:

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It was a cold February day, almost 25 years ago.

I drove downtown, like I did every day, to the big glass building that housed the tech consulting company I worked for. I parked in the garage, took the elevator and then an escalator upstairs and badged in at the door, a routine so ingrained I could do it in my sleep.

Everything was quiet, much quieter than usual. Back then, each of us had an office phone at our desk — remember those? — which had a tiny red light that blinked when you had a message.

But most of us rarely, if ever, used them. Why call when you can email? So mostly they sat silent, stoic, untouched.

That morning as I walked through the still-dark office, though, I noticed tiny red lights blinking everywhere. On this phone, and that one, and that one way over there.

When I got to my desk, my phone was blinking too. So I picked up and listened to the voicemail, which told me I had an appointment in about fifteen minutes. It included the room number, and said to bring my laptop.

I arrived at the room to find two of my co-workers, seated on opposite sides of a table. There was an empty chair, which I assumed was meant for me. So I sat down, and immediately I could hear each of them exhale a little, a hint of the bad news they were about to deliver.

As you’ve probably guessed, they told me I was being laid off, along with several dozen of my other co-workers. It was 2002 and the tech bubble was still bursting, and so they didn’t have much choice.

None of this reflected on me, they assured me, but — as you probably know if you’ve been in this situation — it was pretty cold comfort. The meeting was short; I signed a couple of papers and they gave me a severance check, then followed me to my desk where I gathered up the few belongings I’d kept there.

And then, that was it. I was no longer an employee there, I wouldn’t see my friends who worked there anymore, none of it was a part of my life anymore.

I didn’t know it then, but that morning marked a huge turning point. Where one part — one act, if you will — of my life ended and another began.

All the years leading up to that day, everything had been up — I’d been growing up, going to school, going to college, graduating and getting a job. Then that job led to a better job, and the next job led to a better job still. Things kept looking, well, up.

After that, though, my life went sideways. For a while I drifted — well, first I took my severance check and spent it on a trip visiting friends across the country, driving from Atlanta all the way out to California. But eventually, of course, I had to come back.

What was waiting for me was square one — I had no job, not much money, no real discernible reason for getting out of bed in the morning. Life is short, as they say, but the days really are long. How to fill all that suddenly free time?

I was 31 years old and it was tough for me then; I have friends who are in their mid-50s now and having to start over in new jobs, new relationships, new living arrangements. (In fact, I’m one of them, as I was laid off from my old job and — thankfully! — found a new one at the start of this year.)

In When Harry Met Sally, there’s a wonderful line Billy Crystal’s Harry says to Meg Ryan’s Sally at the end of the movie, when at last he realizes he’s head-over-heels in love with her:

“I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”

This is just a line from a movie, I know, but when we lose something big in our lives — a job, a partner, anything — we want it back, you know? We want the security back, we want to be back on the path we were on. As soon as possible.

At the time, I didn’t understand that the first act of my life had ended and the second was beginning. I tried to hold on to that first act, I think, maybe a little too tightly. I couldn’t see what was right in front of me.

Now, it’s (almost) a quarter-century later and, at times, I wonder if I’ve come to a similar hinge moment in my life. I’m 55 years old; my oldest is about to graduate from college this spring and my youngest will become a teenager in just a few weeks.

Are there other things I need to be doing? Are there parts of my life I’ve given enough energy to, and are there new directions I should aim for?

These are the thoughts that swirl in the back of my mind when I walk and when I run (which has been a rare thing lately). But still, I lace up and get out there, and try to figure it all out.

How about you? As always, keep in touch and let me know how your running/life is going.

Your friend,

— Terrell

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Training miles for this week

So how did your 17 miles go last week? (If you’re following the 12-week training plan.) And if you’re following the plan to run a half by the end of the year, how did your 13 miles go?

This week, you’ll notice we add two miles to the 12-week plan and three miles to the 16-week plan:

Here’s how our next week looks for the 12-week plan:

• Thursday, Sept. 17 — 3 miles/30-35 minutes

• Saturday, Sept. 19 — 5 miles/50-55 minutes

• Sunday, Sept. 20 — 3 miles/30-35 minutes

• Tuesday, Sept. 22 — 3 miles/30-35 minutes

• Wednesday, Sept. 23 — 5 miles/40-45 minutes

And for the 16-week plan:

• Thursday, Sept. 17 — 3 miles/30-35 minutes

• Saturday, Sept. 19 — 5 miles/50-55 minutes

• Sunday, Sept. 20 — 4 miles/40-45 minutes

• Tuesday, Sept. 22 — 4 miles/40-45 minutes

• Wednesday, Sept. 23 — off

And for the 10-mile training plan:

• Thursday, Sept. 17 — 3 miles/30-35 minutes

• Saturday, Sept. 19 — 4 miles/40-45 minutes

• Sunday, Sept. 20 — 3 miles/30-35 minutes

• Tuesday, Sept. 22 — 4 miles/40-45 minutes

• Wednesday, Sept. 23 — off

Let me know how it goes, and don’t hesitate to reach out! — Terrell

I like to think of myself as a good person. (You probably do too, I imagine.) To be honest, it’s not something I think about a lot; at the age I am now, 55, most days I don’t even question it.

But sometimes there are moments — not often, just every now and then — when I ask myself, “well, are you sure? Would you even know if you weren’t?”

Most of us, most of the time, fall into habits of thinking, habits of being. You have to in order to get along in the world, don’t you? We all need a working model of who we are, and how the world works, so that we don’t become paralyzed with decision anxiety over every little thing.

The habits we acquire, though, have a way of becoming second nature to the degree that we aren’t even aware of them. We simply move through the world, acting the way we act and thinking the way we think, without giving them a second thought.

Sometimes you realize, maybe that’s not good enough. Even though you’ve made it this far in life just fine, thank you very much, maybe you need to take a look at yourself and ask, “is what I’m doing still working?”

Recently, I stumbled across an article on Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, which you’ve almost certainly heard of in history class, and which Franklin first sat down to write in 1771 and kept working on until his death in 1790.

The book starts in his childhood and ends with Franklin at age 52; he’d live another 32 years — three of the most consequential decades in American history — so presumably he would have covered more if he’d had the chance.

What struck me as I revisited the Autobiography is that for Franklin — often described as history’s best example of a “self-made” man — that wasn’t just a lofty, abstract ambition. He literally wrote down the ways he wanted to improve himself, setting goals and measuring his progress toward them.

Franklin was 20 years old when he did this; he’d attended school until he was 10, but his father didn’t have the money to pay for his education beyond that. So, he made up for what he lacked by reading voraciously while also working as a printer and newspaperman, swimming in the political and philosophical currents of his day.

At that point in his (still young) life, Franklin believed he knew right from wrong, that he knew what a good life was. It’s just that simple, right? Not exactly, he tells us:

“As I knew, or thought I knew, what was right and wrong, I did not see why I might not always do the one and avoid the other. But I soon found I had undertaken a task of more difficulty than I imagined.”

Franklin knew himself well enough; temptation pulled at him constantly, in every conceivable way. (Yes, in all the ways you’re imagining!) He was bound to lose his way, he feared, if he didn’t make a conscious choice to improve himself.

So when he sat down to write out a plan, he called on everything he’d ever read: religious, classical and philosophical texts, distilling their lessons into what he labeled the “thirteen necessary virtues”:

1. TEMPERANCE. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.

2. SILENCE. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.

3. ORDER. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.

4. RESOLUTION. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.

5. FRUGALITY. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.

6. INDUSTRY. Lose no time; be always employ’d in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.

7. SINCERITY. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.

8. JUSTICE. Wrong none by doing injuries or omitting the benefits that are your duty.

9. MODERATION. Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.

10. CLEANLINESS. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation.

11. TRANQUILLITY. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.

12. CHASTITY. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dulness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.

13. HUMILITY. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

Seeing these, all listed, hit me like a bolt of lightning. That’s because I often catch myself in thought, wishing this or that thing had gone differently in my day, wondering what I might have done differently. Those thoughts always evaporate, though, never to be heard from again.

What if I were to sit down and actually take an inventory of myself, and figure out the things I wanted to improve — and then actually try them? Take one virtue and practice it each week, just like Franklin did?

Some of his virtues I can easily see where I need work; others I think I’ve probably nailed by now. (But maybe not, who knows?)

Have you ever tried something like this in your own life? Made an inventory, and then attempted to make the changes that inventory called for?

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

Your friend,

— Terrell

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How did your running go over the past week? Especially if you’re following one of the training plans I listed last week, how did it go?

Here’s how our next week looks for the 12-week plan:

• Thursday, Sept. 10 — 3 miles/30-35 minutes

• Saturday, Sept. 12 — 4 miles/40-45 minutes

• Sunday, Sept. 13 — 3 miles/30-35 minutes

• Tuesday, Sept. 15 — 3 miles/30-35 minutes

• Wednesday, Sept. 16 — 4 miles/40-45 minutes

And for the 16-week plan:

• Thursday, Sept. 10 — 3 miles/30-35 minutes

• Saturday, Sept. 12 — 4 miles/40-45 minutes

• Sunday, Sept. 13 — 3 miles/30-35 minutes

• Tuesday, Sept. 15 — 3 miles/30-35 minutes

• Wednesday, Sept. 16 — off

If you’d like to run a 10-miler instead…

• Thursday, Sept. 10 — 3 miles/30-35 minutes

• Saturday, Sept. 12 — 3 miles/40-45 minutes

• Sunday, Sept. 13 — 2-3 miles/20-30 minutes

• Tuesday, Sept. 15 — 3 miles/30-35 minutes

• Wednesday, Sept. 16 — off

Want to keep going? Become a subscriber

If you’re using and enjoying the training plans each week, I hope you’ll consider becoming a full subscriber — after this week, they’ll be available only to paying subscribers.

You’ll get a special Sunday issue with amazing races you’ll love running, plus lots more interaction with our amazing community that’s spread all around the U.S. and the world.

All you need to do is click/tap this button to join us!

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About fifteen or so years ago, long before this newsletter was even a twinkle in my eye, a friend of mine would give me a call right around this time of year.

“Terrell, you know what time it is, right?”

I’d pause, then remember. “Oh no,” I’d think to myself, laughing. “Not again.”

“Yep,” he’d say. “It’s time.”

“Do we really have to?” I’d reply. “Wasn’t last spring enough?”

“Oh that was just the warm-up, my friend,” he’d say, or something like it. “Now it’s time to get out there again… so get those running shoes ready and meet us this weekend, because we’re doing this.”

And thus would begin our journey, along with a few other friends, over the next three months as we trained for a race together; usually it was a half marathon, sometimes a little longer. (We even ran a 21-miler once.)

We followed this ritual every fall for a few years, and while I loved it, I also slightly dreaded it — because it had been so nice being lazy all summer.

I imagine you might be feeling exactly the same right now. It can be so hard to get going again once inertia kicks in; a body at rest prefers to stay at rest, doesn’t it?

Not to mention, this year — especially this summer — may have brought challenges you weren’t expecting. Maybe it’s just the god-awful heat so many of us are experiencing (hand raised here) or maybe it’s a job change that’s disrupted your routine (hand raised again).

Whatever it is, I feel you. My running routine is all of out of kilter thanks to a combination of all of the above, which means I haven’t been feeling like myself lately. And I’ve been needing to get back to some semblance of it.

Two people I’ve spoken with recently for interviews here — Charles Zuckerman and Abby Heffern — have been on my mind a lot lately. The thoughts they’ve shared around how they’ve adjusted their routines to match their stage of life — to deal with the reality they’re actually experiencing — have really made me think.

Sometimes, you can’t give running your best — but, you can give it something. You can keep your toe in the water, so you’ll be ready for the times when you can give more to it, and get more out of it.

Ever seen the 1992 movie A River Runs Through It? If so, then you remember the reverence the main character and narrator, Norman Maclean, has for the rivers of his home state of Montana, and for fly fishing.

He learns that reverence from his father, who taught both he and his brother Paul the art of fishing as if they were training for the priesthood. (And their father, in fact, was a Presbyterian minister.)

Around the middle of the movie, Norman’s girlfriend Jessie asks him to take her brother Neal fly fishing with him and Paul, in hopes of helping them get to know her family a little better. Reluctantly, Norman agrees.

But Neal, unaccustomed to the ways of the Maclean clan, gets drunk and stays out all night; when morning rolls around and it’s time to go fishing, he can barely keep his eyes open, much less cast a line.

Norman and Paul decide to fish on their own, leaving Neal in their car to sleep it off. The day doesn’t get any better, and once they’re done, it dawns on Norman how unhappy Jessie will be.

There’s one, brief throwaway line in this scene, though, that for some reason has always stuck with me, since the first time I saw the movie. It comes when Brad Pitt’s Paul Maclean, searching for some way to salvage the day, says, “hey brother, let’s say we come back tomorrow, and wipe this day off the books.”

That’s what I’d like to use this fall for. No matter what I’ve been through or how I haven’t been able to get out there, maybe — just maybe — we all can start fresh, and wipe yesterday off the books, you know?

How about you? Where are you with your running? With your fitness? Are you where you want to be, or has life thrown you a curveball recently?

I’d love to hear, either in replies back or in the comments — as always, keep in touch!

Your friend,

— Terrell

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Our training plans!

As promised, I’ve put together a couple of different half marathon training plans we’ll use to run together over the next few months. (If you’d like one for another distance, like the 10-mile or the marathon, let me know.)

Run a half by Thanksgiving

For those of us who’d like to run 13.1 miles by Thanksgiving, our plan starts with tomorrow’s three-mile run — and, to the day, is timed for exactly 12 weeks before Thanksgiving.

It’s a five-day-a-week plan, and looks like this:

• Thursday, Sept. 3 — 3 miles/30-35 minutes

• Saturday, Sept. 5 — 4 miles/40-45 minutes

• Sunday, Sept. 6 — 3 miles/30-35 minutes

• Tuesday, Sept. 8 — 3 miles/30-35 minutes

• Wednesday, Sept. 9 — 4 miles/40-45 minutes

Or, run a half by the end of the year

For those of us who can’t devote five days a week to training, I’ve put together a 16-week plan, which ends on December 23:

• Thursday, Sept. 3 — 3 miles/30-35 minutes

• Saturday, Sept. 5 — 4 miles/40-45 minutes

• Sunday, Sept. 6 — 3 miles/30-35 minutes

• Tuesday, Sept. 8 — 3 miles/30-35 minutes

• Wednesday, Sept. 9 — off

For the full training plan, become a subscriber

For the next couple of weeks, I’ll include each week’s training miles in our weekly Wednesday newsletter. After that, they’ll be for paying subscribers only. If you’d like to continue with us beyond that, I hope you’ll sign up.

You’ll get a special Sunday issue with amazing races you’ll love running, plus lots more interaction with our amazing community that’s spread all around the U.S. and the world.

All you need to do is click/tap this button to join us!

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Morning, friends! ☀️ You’ll notice a few changes to the Sunday newsletter today, as I’ve begun playing around with the format. A lot will be familiar, some things will be new; as always, feel free to share any feedback with me. I’m all ears! — Terrell

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I’ve sent out weekly training plans — for different schedules/dates, from a 12-week to an 18-week training plan — and we’ve run them together each week.

My question is, are you up for that again? I’d love to get your input, as making it a group endeavor makes it a lot of fun — but we don’t have to. I just thought I’d throw that out there in case you’d like to.

Let me know your thoughts! — Terrell

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I’m really excited to share today’s interview with you, as we hear from someone who’s close to my own age, and whose sense of what’s possible inspired me with every word he shared.

Today you meet , an architect-designer-contractor who has traveled the world with his wife and children, running really every distance you can imagine — from 10Ks to 50Ks to marathons to ultras.

His enthusiasm for running — and for staying in shape in general — came in very early middle age, when a doctor put him on Lipitor at age 36. Determined to get off the medication, which his doctor had said was highly unlikely, he started taking his health seriously in a way he never had before.

The rest, as they say, is history — and so I won’t babble on any longer. I hope you have as much fun reading Charles’s story as I did, and as always, I’d love to hear yours too! — 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.

My name is Charles Zuckerman and I am 58 years old. I come from the Boston suburb of Brookline but have lived in Niger, Germany, Romania, Wisconsin and Texas. For the last 28 years I have called San Francisco home.

I have been married for 32 years. I met [my wife] Mihaela back-packing through Romania and she is the reason I stayed there for a year. We have two wonderful daughters.

I am a licensed architect in the state of California and have worked as a designer, general contractor and owners’ representative. I retired in 2021 but recently came out of retirement to help two friends with an architectural software start-up.

But while that is what I did, that is not really who I am. What I am is someone who likes to explore the world in which I find myself and look into all the interesting and fascinating corners which abound inside and out.

Al Arnold, the first runner to make the intrepid trip from Badwater Basin in Death Valley to the summit of Mount Whitney, and thus inspired the annual Badwater ultramarathon, used to walk for hours in his back yard.

A neighborhood kid asked, “how big is your back yard?” His answer: “how big is your mind?” I think I tended to that point of view since I was young but I have strived for it ever since I read it.

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

My running routine has varied significantly in the many years I have been running. I discovered ultra running around 2006 and prepped for my first 100-miler in 2008. I was up to 100 miles a week then.

In those years, I joined a gym where I worked and would run there 10 to 15 miles a day with a knapsack between 3:30 and 5:30 in the morning, stretch, do weights when the gym opened, and then shower and go to work.

After I changed jobs, I would do short morning runs and leave work early on Friday for the trails in the Headlands of Marin. There I would run from 4 in the afternoon until 2 in the morning, reserving Saturday and Sunday for my kids.

But now I have dialed it back to four days a week between 6 and 10 miles. Most often, my wife and I will head down to Crystal Springs reservoir and hike six miles to the far end. I then run back to the car. While waiting for her to hike back, do some stretching and strength work.

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

God, no! In fact, one of my earliest memories was the old presidential physical fitness tests. I couldn’t do a pull-up.

I remember fourth grade, trying to run the 660-yard test and being unable to finish. I was quite pudgy at the time (I would have said fat but I think that overstates it, looking at photos). But I always walked a lot.

After my freshman year of high school year, my parents signed me up for a four-week summer youth bike ride in Nova Scotia. One weekend, I convinced two friends to bike from Boston to Fall River to see the Battle Ship Massachusetts, a ride of 70 miles or so.

Boy was my dad surprised — [he was] outwardly angry, but I could tell there was some pride too — when we called collect to be picked up. It was then that I realized that endurance was a part of overall fitness and a place that I excelled.

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?’

Two separate times, two separate events.

When I was studying architecture at the University of Texas, my entire studio used to spend hours sitting at our desks drafting and eating crap. We were all young enough to maintain residual fitness but we all new it wasn’t healthy.

There was a woman in our studio who had run a marathon in undergraduate school and suggested that we all train together for the 1998 Austin Marathon. Many of us signed up and began training.

One by one people fell off, but three of us made it through finals before Christmas break on the plan. I was shocked when I returned for spring semester and found out I was the only one who stuck with it through the holidays. I was the only one who made it to the starting line. Four hours and six minutes later, I was a marathon runner.

I continued to run for the remainder of my graduate student life (including another Austin Marathon), but fell off the bus when I started working in San Francisco. Just like in school, I sat at a desk eating greasy fast food and working long hours. My wife and I had our two daughters and time was scarce.

The I went for a routine check-up. I was 36 years old, 238 pounds. My cholesterol was bad, my blood pressure borderline.

But the worst was my triglycerides. Healthy is sub 150. Mine were 706! My doctor put me on Lipitor. When I asked if I could correct it with diet and exercise, she informed me no, maybe lifestyle can move it 25 percent — but mine was hereditary.

My pencil-thin mother had just had a heart attack and one of my cousins numbers were worse than mine, so it made sense. But I refused to take no for an answer. I started to jog again and limited my calories to 1,500 per day with only 10 percent from fats.

I also joined the gym I mentioned, downstairs from my work. They assigned a coach for five free sessions to see if they could hook me — it worked.

Brian was an ultra-runner training for the Western States Endurance Run. I decided, if it was all downhill after age 40, I wanted to be at the top of a big f*cking hill and set running 100 miles as a goal.

Brian was instrumental in getting me there but on the way, I rediscovered how good I am at endurance efforts and how much I love running in the woods. I ran the Headlands Hundred in 2008 and haven’t looked back.

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

I neither run farther nor faster now. I recorded my fastest times fairly early on during my second incarnation as a runner. My fastest marathon, 50K, 50-miler, 100K and 100-miler were all between the ages of 39 and 41.

For a long time, I actually thought I might get a sub-3-hour marathon (3:10 was my best but I was still pulling off 3:30s into my fifties). But I think those days are behind me.

Instead of pushing speed, I decided to push activity and distance barriers, completing the California Death Ride in 2013, the Sonoma Ironman in 2018 and the Badwater 135 in 2023. My efforts evolved into fitness goals with some peak event every five years. In the fall of 2024, I had my left hip replaced but I am back up to comfortably doing 50Ks and am now trying to figure out what to do in 2028 to celebrate turning sixty.

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?

This balance is often the trickiest part. For the vast majority of time I have been running and biking, I have always worked it into a part of my commute. In general, I would run or bike to work early in the morning so my evenings were free.

My long runs have traditionally been Friday nights or very early Saturday to free up the weekends as family/recovery time. My children are also athletic and growing up they often had swim meets around the Bay Area.

On those days, I would bike to their meets. For the furthest ones (like Salinas, which is a ride of about 110 miles), I would leave the house at 2 or 3 in the morning to get there by 11.

Sometimes work would take me to Sacramento for afternoon meetings. In those cases, I would take the first BART train to the end of the line and bike to the meetings. And when I worked at the San Francisco International airport, it was a nice 10-mile run to the office.

One important job factor for me is always to have access to a shower. Once, when planning out the job site trailer for a major project in Mountain View, my boss added a shower to the temporary work facility plans after he saw me arrive after biking in the morning.

By combining my commutes with my exercise goals, I managed to always keep my evenings and most weekends free for the fam.

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

Six months after starting the crazy diet and exercise routine I mentioned, I got off Lipitor. All my health markers have been in the good to excellent range ever since. I am not too concerned with lifespan, but I want a great health span.

I also have found that I do my best thinking when I am out running. Just recently I came up with an idea to use my new company’s platform with another start-up in the AI space to extend the lifecycle of our initial product while simultaneously extending the other company’s market footprint. Running outside the box frees my thinking to be outside the box.

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

It is a little bit of a chicken-and-egg question. I have developed incredible mental stamina. My ability to focus for long periods of time on one thing often even surprises me.

That said, I was always getting lost in thought as a kid, drawing and looking up to discover several hours had gone by. Was I drawn to running because of my propensity to be single-minded or did I strengthen that muscle by running stupid long distances? Not sure which came first!

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?

At 58, I am under no illusion that I am on the long slow decline. I am not sure getting faster or longer are really in the cards at this point.

But keeping goals is still really incredibly important to me. As I mentioned, having five-year goals has always been a priority and I am now in the throes of figuring out my 60th year challenge.

Originally I thought a double Badwater would be the ticket but I am starting to tac to something else: the Grand Canyon Rim to Rim to Rim. I have done South Rim to River to Rim.

I was driving a U-haul across country and decided to stop in Flagstaff for an extra night to do it on the spur of the moment but needed to buy micro-spikes (Early March - Ice). The store on the Rim didn’t open until 8:00 a.m., so I got started too late to do the whole thing.

There are also several races scattered around the world that I would love to do as part of vacationing with my wife. Ever since 2009, I have wanted to do the Sunrise to Sunset Marathon in Mongolia (100K, the Grand Raid in Reunion, the Marathon Des Sables in Morocco, the Canal Races in England — just to name a few.

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 really get bored, but sometimes if I take too long a break, I am sluggish starting up again. Residual fitness just doesn’t last like it used to.

But in a strange way, that is what keeps me going. I love to travel. I love adventure. In the last 15 months, I have had the joy of visiting Greece, China and Albania. Even if not going for a run, fitness is a key part for squeezing every moment of adventure out of every opportunity.

Two years ago, my wife and I were at a destination wedding for a nephew outside Mexico City at New Year’s. Three nights in a row, we were out dancing until the place shut down.

When it ended we flew to Chetumal and rented a car to drive to the Mayan ruins at Calakmul four hours into the jungles of central Yucatan. We spent two days climbing pyramids and exploring places most people never get to.

These adventures are only possible by staying fit and able. I watch the world get smaller as people get older. I never want my world to stop expanding.

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 was not a happy kid — particularly between the ages of about 10 and 17. I saw every glass as half empty. I felt like I didn’t fit in. I was bad at sports and not athletic. Although plenty capable, I hated school and my grades reflected that.

I guess I would say to my former self, just stay curious, stay inquisitive. Remember, we live in three planes: the past, the present and the future. Relish the story telling that depends on your greatest memories.

Plan for the future, give yourself the means and tools to get to where you want to go. But live in the moment. Enjoy the wind blowing an insect across your path. Find one thing every day as you fall asleep that brought you a moment of joy that day.

Be present in what you are doing as you do it. Doing so will turn the goodness of tomorrow into a self fulfilling prophesy and the story-telling tomorrow of what you did yesterday into a great day with your friends.

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“Maybe ye don’t know it, Mr. Herriot, but this is the best time of your life.”

“Do you think so?”

“Aye, there’s no doubt about it. When your children are young and growin’ up around ye — that’s when it’s best. It’s the same for everybody, only a lot o’ folk don’t know it and a lot find out when it’s too late. It doesn’t last long, you know.”

— James Herriot, The Lord God Made Them All

It’s a cliché, of course, but it’s true: you always look at your children the way they were when they were little — like the photo above, in which my now almost-13-year-old son was still just five, and I took him fishing at a pond near our house.

That’s why it wasn’t all that surprising when he asked me earlier this week, “Dad, is it hard for you seeing me as grown up now?”

(Of course, he’s not grown up all the way yet, but in his mind he might as well be.)

“Yeah, it is,” I replied. “But I’m starting to make my peace with it.” Because at a certain point, your only real choice is to accept it, you know?

Then he said something I didn’t expect: “Well, I hope you haven’t made too much peace with it.”

What I think he meant was, while he’s ready for the power-ups that come with growing up — and a phone is right at the top of that list, which I’ll get to in just a sec — he still likes being a kid, he’s not ready for all that comes with being a teenager just yet.

He’s seen quite a few episodes of Seinfeld with me. But this summer, we also went to see — his choice — the new live-action Moana, The Mandalorian and Grogu, and Toy Story 5, among others.

(We also saw and really liked Spider Man: Brand New Day, though I could’ve done with a little less swearing; but hey, that’s just me.)

So, he still has one foot in kid-dom, even though every day he gets closer to becoming an adolescent. It happens little by little; you notice a different tone in their voice, a little more assertiveness in their step.

You ask yourself, “what was that I heard?” (Though you know exactly what it was, because it’s the same way you acted when you were that age.)

A friend of mine once likened raising kids to someone giving you a glass of sweet tea. It’s perfect, and for the longest time, you can’t imagine it being different. Over time, though, you start to notice hints of something else; did someone pour unsweet tea in here by mistake?

Year by year, there’s a little more in there, then a little more. And then one day, the sweetness is all gone. This is okay, my friend told me; it’s just a phase, and it’s one you’ll learn to roll with — and, fingers crossed, will open the door to a new kind of relationship.

It doesn’t mean, though, that you won’t feel nostalgia for the old one. And the old one has been pretty great this past year, as little T and I have spent much of it outside in our backyard: playing football, basketball and now baseball/Wiffle ball as each season has changed.

We’ve played almost daily, and there haven’t been any alerts pinging and buzzing a device in his pocket all that time, because there hasn’t been a device there to buzz.

In the not too distant future, though — very likely this fall — there will be. With him, we’re fast approaching the age when basically every kid has a phone; most of his friends have one now, and the few that don’t will very soon.

As you might imagine, I’m torn. There’s a part of me that would like to throw my own phone in the ocean, as I know I’ve struggled with using it too much at times. (Maybe a little more than “at times” if I’m being honest.)

But I’m also persuaded by the argument that we need to prepare kids for how to interact with the digital world, not pretend it doesn’t exist. So, we take all the advice we’ve heard and seen, and we try to figure out a path that’s best for us.

And meanwhile, we try to hold on to the “sweet tea” days as much as we can. It’s hard not because I think my son is, on the day we get him a phone, suddenly become a different person. Not at all.

Rather, it’s because I know he’ll be taking his first big step into the whole teenager thing. It’ll unfold slowly, I know, but maybe neither one of us is quite ready for all the changes that will surely come.

But come they will, right? If you have any advice for this phase — or really anything! — I’d love to hear it. As always, keep in touch and let me know how your running/life is going.

Your friend,

— Terrell

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