Hey there! 👋 I'm back on Sunday
With races you'll love running in Davidson, Lake Garda, Scottsbluff, Snoqalmie Pass, Valencia + Waitsfield, plus Mary Cain's new memoir, the Ethiopian running secret, and a podcast I LOVED
Morning, friends! ☀️
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
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.