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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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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I’m visiting my folks in Augusta, Ga., this weekend, where we celebrated my father’s 85th birthday last night. And believe it or not, snow is in the forecast here today, which means we’re going to need to get on the road back home to Atlanta sooner rather than later, so I’ll keep this opening note brief.

Also, I …

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Before we get started, I must admit this has been a week that has really challenged me. Seeing the news we’ve seen from Minnesota has been heartbreaking in a way I wasn’t prepared for, and have struggled to process. I’m 55 years old and we’re seeing things that, growing up, I didn’t ever, ever imagine I’d see in the United States.

What h…

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Little T and I were driving around yesterday doing some last-minute shopping, stopping…

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It’s a little gray, misty and cloudy as I wake up here in Atlanta this morning, though the day ahead is supposed to bring much sunnier, clearer weather. So I hope to get outside for a run this afternoon, as I’m finally feeling like I’m getting my legs back under me again after taking a running break for a couple of weeks. How is your…

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First, I want to send warm wishes and best of luck to the members of our group running the New York City Marathon today — right now, in fact! It looks like it’s a beautiful, crisp, sunny day for running there (even if a bit cold). I hope you all go out and have the best, best day.

Second… well, today there is no second, just the retur…

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These past few days have been the first so far this year when it feels like fall is actually, really here — temperatures at or close to their averages for October, there’s a chill in the air when we open our door in the morning, and you can feel that crispness when you walk outside.

I hope you’re able to get out and enjoy it, wherever…

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My apologies for landing in your inbox a few hours later than I normally do — we celebrated little T’s birthday this weekend, so the little boy I’ve been describing to you as an 11-year-old is now 12; how did this even happen?!

Almost every day, I’ll walk through our house and …

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I hope you’ve had a really wonderful week — I just happened to stumble across some interesting advice this morning, based on a book called Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less.

Basically, the thesis of the book is that we’re almost always drawn to do, create or generally add more to our lives, work or projects. But what if that’s co…

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Just a quick note to remind you that we’re running a race together in person this fall, here where I live at the Atlanta PNC 10-Miler on Sunday, October 19. I’d love, love, love to have you join us if you can — get all the details here and sign up for the race here.

In the meantime, I hope you have an amazing, amazing run out there to…

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I’m in my hometown of Augusta, Ga., visiting my dad this weekend so this note will be a short and sweet one — but I did want to call your attention to this wonderful, brief interview I stumbled across with Alexi Pappas, the former collegiate and Olympic runner (and author of the memoir Bravey).

All the time, I find myself losing sight…

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He practiced with the team every day but one this past week, running more in a four-day period than I think he ever has in his life. But he did it, even though on a couple of those …

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I have a very short and sweet issue for you this morning, as I’m out of town for one last quick beach trip of the summer with my family, and (hopefully!) I’ll be able to get some running in while I’m there.

I’ll have the training schedule for this October’s Atlanta PNC 10-Miler for you this week, and I hope you’ll think about joining …

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Another short and sweet newsletter today, as I’m away on vacation with my family, but didn’t want to leave you high and dry — so I put this issue together before I left town.

There’ll likely be news between now and the time you see this in your inbox; at the top of that list, we’ll know if Faith Kipyegon was able to become the first w…

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As you know, it’s Father’s Day today, so this will be very short and sweet — for some of you, today is a day of joy and togetherness, while for others it might be a day that’s harder, especially if you’ve lost your dad or your relationships with him (or with your children) have become more distant, or maybe never were what you wanted…

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As you may have seen, on Friday I tried a little experiment with our Friday discussion thread, by sending it out as a Chat in the Substack app rather than the method I normally use: a page on our website that allows us to post in the comments.

I was a little surprised at the lack of responses until I received an email from a subscribe…

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First, I wanted to give a shout-out to the new people who’ve joined as members over the past month or so — welcome aboard! It’s great to have you here, and please feel free to reach out with any questions you have.

(And to share your story if and when you feel ready, as the subscriber stories are quickly becoming my favorite part of…

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It’s early Thursday evening, and little T and I have tickets to see the opening-day showing of the last (maybe?) installment in the Mission: Impossible movie series, this weekend’s The Final Reckoning.

We have about twenty minutes before the movie starts, and we need to pick up a friend of his on the way to the theater. But T, who’s been dressed and ready to go for at least an hour, decides he’d like to do a wardrobe change.

“Dad, I want to try something,” he says.

Looking at my watch, I’m tempted to roll my eyes and say no, but I give in.

“Sure, why not,” I reply.

In about ten minutes — which I watch creep by on my watch, tick by tick — he’s back downstairs, dressed in white shirt, dark pants and dark blazer.

“Okay, I’m ready to go.”

And that’s when I realize, he’s going to the movie dressed as Tom Cruise — the Cruise we saw two years ago in M:I Dead Reckoning, running atop the Abu Dhabi airport and through the streets of Venice.

Sure enough, when we arrive at the theater — just barely in time, by the way — T asks me, “Dad, can I run to the door?” Just like his favorite movie star.

Of course I said yes! He and his friend ran, and did the same thing when we exited the theater three hours later. (And yes, the movie’s almost three hours long!)

The reason I share this with you isn’t because it’s especially out of the ordinary, or that he doesn’t do this stuff all the time. He does, but he’s also eleven years old now, and will turn twelve in just a few months. Which (probably?) means, we’ll start to see less and less of this kind of thing from him, and probably soon.

I truly hope not — I truly hope I’m wrong, and he keeps being the joyful, unselfconscious little guy he’s always been. But I know too, puberty comes for us all, and our relationship will change; and as odd as it may seem because it hasn’t happened yet, I’ve already begun to feel the first pangs of nostalgia for his almost-completed childhood.

I don’t really know why; as you can see, it’s not over yet! But something about the moment we’re in has made me realize there’s not a whole lot left of it, that I need to make sure I’m fully present for it all.

And, the truth is, we’ve all seen a hundred or more inspirational quotations that tell us that; we all know we need to gather our rosebuds while we may.

That’s really hard to do, though, when you’re in the middle of raising kids, especially in those really early years; a writer described it perfectly in The Atlantic a few years ago:

It’s hard to admire the curl taking shape in a child’s hair when you haven’t had a full night’s rest in months and are covered in another human’s bodily fluids. Likewise, the joys of parenthood can be overshadowed by the fear of screwing it up. “We’re really trying not to make any life-defining mistakes,” Woods said. Graham suspects that the singularity of the bond between a parent and a young child gets lost in the overwhelm and monotony of living it every moment of every day.

Only with distance from the minute-to-minute anxieties of caring for a small child does its sweeping beauty come into full view. But this isn’t so much a shortcoming of youth as it is a gift of age. The experiences that follow early parenthood enrich our understanding of it, allowing us to ponder it anew. Hindsight allows us to put suffering into context and recognize the purpose it served in our lives. Hohlbaum likened it to laying bricks in a road: Only after we find out where the path leads are we able to see the purpose each brick served in getting us there. People with grown children have a deeper appreciation for the initial years of parenthood, because they are observing it from a perspective that only time can grant.

There’s one more thing about parenting I haven’t seen much remarked on: having kids isn’t (only) something that happens to you — I’ve been changed by it too. It’s given me a chance to view life with fresh eyes, to experience a second childhood of my own in a way.

So I think there’s a part of me that’s wistful about that coming to a close; I know there will be new phases ahead, it’s just hard to see that right now.

Until they arrive, we’ll just keep running, right?

In the meantime, I hope you have a wonderful, restful three-day weekend, and get some great runs in out there. As always, keep in touch.

Your friend,

— Terrell

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🏃‍♀️ To run

🌲 The Kan. “Explore alpine meadows, huckleberry groves, and old pine forests” as you run the trails inside Washington’s Mount Spokane State Park at this early summer race known simply as “The Kan,” which offers a 50K, 25K and 10K distance. You’ll run the trails that wind through a section of the state park known as Mount Spokane Ski and Snowboard Park, and you’ll need to be ready for some steep climbs: the 10K features an elevation gain of some 1,700 feet, while the 25K features 3,500 feet and the 50K — or roughly 32 miles — a whopping 6,000 feet. Each distance, organizers say, is filled with “steep climbs and fast descents,” with plenty of both single- and double-track trails. Set for Saturday, June 14.

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I’m writing this note to you on Friday afternoon, almost two full days before it will land in your inboxes. That fact leaves me a little wary, as I prefer to write to you as soon as I can before publishing — there’s something about the immediacy of this medium that lends itself to being in the moment.

So, if anything big happens betw…

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