Beaufort, Blue River, Cyprus, New Holland, Rising Fawn, San Rafael, Vail + Sierra Leone

Races you'll love running + weekly recommendations

Good morning/afternoon, friends! ☀️

I’ve just returned from a weekend visiting my daughter at college for parents’ weekend, and that’s after a weekend or two ago, when we took our son to New Orleans for some Halloween-themed touring during his fall break from school.

What that all means is, my running is getting jumbled around on my weekly calendar, like yours likely is, especially during this, which feels like the busiest weeks of the year. Or, maybe it’s just because I’m a parent, and this is a particularly busy season of life — with a 10-year-old on his way to becoming an adolescent, and a 19-year-old on her way to becoming an adult.

Day by day, the ground shifts underneath us, just a little. It’s only after an extended stretch of time that I can look back and see how much in our lives is different now from what it used to be. When our youngest was really young, it felt like time crawled by, inch by inch. Now, it feels like a month goes by in a week.

I share this with you because I realized something over the weekend: that each of us is an individual, precious and unique, and the universe has never seen anything like each of us (and never will again once we’re gone). But our problems are so similar, our challenges share so many commonalities.

So, even though my own life is unique, with its own set of circumstances, I face the same challenges that you write to me about: how to find the motivation, and how to find the time to run. Those are the two big ones that we all face, for which there are always fresh challenges, it seems, no matter what season of life we’re in.

Between now and the Richmond Half Marathon on November 11, I’ll have to get creative to find times to get in my running — but that’s always going to be the case, isn’t it? Unless my Powerball ticket comes up next time, I’ll always have competing obligations to navigate.

And that’s okay, because we can do this. We always could, it was just up to us to find a way, right?

I hope you had a lovely weekend and are enjoying the fall weather — as always, keep in touch and let me know how your running/life is going.

Your friend,

— Terrell

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🏃 To run

⛰️ Storm the Castle Half Marathon. A beautifully scenic and challenging run into the mountains of Oregon’s Willamette National Forest, up and down the Kings Castle and Castle Rock trails near the community of Blue River. Expect lots of climbing; you’ll ascend more than 2,800 feet over the course of the race, where “once you hit the summit you will be rewarded  with amazing views of the surrounding mountains including the Sisters mountains,” organizers say. Set for December 2, 2023.

🌄 Cloudland Canyon Half Marathon. There are still a handful of spots left in this stunningly gorgeous run deep into one of the most beautiful places in Georgia, the 3,500-acre Cloudland Canyon State Park — home “to thousand-foot deep canyons, sandstone cliffs, wild caves, waterfalls, cascading creeks, dense woodland and abundant wildlife.” You’ll run down inside its canyons for many of your miles, passing by waterfalls as you run over hills and alongside streams throughout. As the organizers say, “we can not reiterate how beautiful this course is!” Set for December 2, 2023.