The first “Penguin Chronicles” wasn’t even called the penguin chronicles. It wasn’t called anything. It was just an email. It was June of 1995, I’d been running for a few years, had been having a lot of fun participating in events, including a couple of duathlons and triathlons, and I’d heard of a group on the internet called “The Dead Runners Society.” In those days The Dead Runners Society was sort of a secret email server group made up mostly of academic and government types who shared their running and racing experiences with each other. Somehow I got invited to…

What I learned in my first 10 years of running I can’t believe it. My anniversary almost slipped by without my realizing it. If someone hadn’t asked, I might have missed it altogether. Wedding anniversary? Nope. My running anniversary. I’ve now been a runner for 10 years. That’s a lot of my life. I’m 53, which means I’ve been running for almost 20 percent of my life. I became an adult at 21 (although many of my friends and relatives would question that), so I’ve been running for nearly a third of my adult life. Giant, milestone anniversaries like this…

 – First published, Runner’s World, January 1997 –  This is the first January since I began running five years ago that I haven’t been injured. Some years it was just a left over pain, and others it was more serious. In any case, January has always been when I started from zero. I got pretty good at starting over. My January logs look strangely alike: some walking, some stationary biking, and a little running. There’s never been any training in January, just recovery and physical therapy. Every January I was a new runner. Every January I had to start slowly…

Originally published as “The Recess Bell”, co-authored by Lee Allsbrook, now a retired Professor of Physical Education at Middle Tennessee State University.  – AS SIMPLE AS CHILD’S PLAY –  Robert Fulghum wrote that everything he really needed to know, he learned in kindergarten. Fulghum contends that the lessons of childhood, like sharing and playing fair, are just as important to us as adults. We would argue that everything we really need to know about play, we also learned in kindergarten. As children we knew instinctively how to play, where to play, when to play, and how much to play. As…

Learning to do one thing well eventually leads to doing all things better. People often ask me if, as a writer, I like to read. The answer is yes—although it wasn’t always so. As a child I was an undiagnosed dyslexic. Reading was difficult, comprehension almost impossible, and reading aloud simply terrifying. I felt stupid even though I wasn’t. It took getting into a Ph.D. program for me to get past that insecurity. So yes, finally, I like to read. One of my favorite books in recent years is “The Power of Full Engagement”, by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz….

I recently received an email from a person who wanted to become more active. They wanted to start walking, running and maybe even compete in a few local 5K and 10K races. They thought that being more active might be a good way to lose some weight and feel better. So far, not a bad plan. But, they went on, they were not willing to change their eating habits, they were not willing to drink less and they were not willing to quit smoking. Their question to me was how much activity did I think they would need to overcome…

We. The few, the proud, the plodding. Steven Pinker, in “The Language Instinct“, suggests that if language didn’t exist, people would be so driven to communicate that they would create a language. So strong is our instinct toward communication that there are almost no recorded instances of groups of people who have not developed a means of talking to one another. Surely our ancestors had a running instinct as well. It’s hard to imagine a community of humans that would not have included runners. Some, though, then as now, were just a little slower than others. The evidence of this…

The power to change comes from within. But that doesn’t mean we can’t use a little help. Have you ever noticed that when the friends and neighbors of someone accused of committing a horrible crime are interviewed, they always say the same thing: “I can’t believe he did it. He seemed so normal.” I’m quite sure that if anyone had interviewed my friends and neighbors when I first started running, they would have offered much the same response. I’m sure that they couldn’t understand why this middle-aged, overweight man was out there running and walking nearly every day. It just…

Why runners should set their sights on their next steps, instead of where they’ve already been. It’s been said that you can never put your foot in the same river twice. Rivers are alive, flowing, and in constant motion. The river that was there a moment ago is long gone. The same is true for music, art, and movies. We never really hear the same song twice or see the same piece of art twice. What we bring to a second or third or hundredth exposure to a song or a painting is always different than the time before. We…

Believe it or not, the human machine can equal the power of a Harley. Until I discovered running, I had only two passions in life: music and motorcycles. Each fueled the other, and employment in one usually meant greater opportunities to pursue the other. For many years, this combination was perfect – I worked long enough as a freelance musician to build a financial base, then rode long enough to need the next gig. Maintaining the balance between time and money was tricky, but with care and a willingness to consume nothing more than peanut butter and beer, it was…