Forget stress. One of the best things about running is that it’s absolutely unnecessary. I don’t have to run. Very few of us do, really. It’s not like we’re chasing down our food. We don’t have to escape from predators. Heck, most of us don’t have to run to catch a bus. But we run. The question then becomes why? My own survey of thousands of runners has convinced me that the number one reason most people start to run is to lose weight. When the diameter of your waist is more than one-and-a-half times the length of your inseam…

Venturing off-road leads to simple yet profound discoveries. I’ve never been much of a trail runner. Okay, I’ve never been much of a road runner either, but that’s not the point. As one whose feet never get more than an inch off the ground, I worry about bumps in the sidewalk. So it’s hard to imagine encountering branches, roots and rocks. But I finally gave in. With all the hoopla about the pleasures of trail running, I thought I should at least see what the fuss was about. And to my surprise, I discovered a fun, new running environment. It…

Track workouts can take you places the open road can’t. Okay, I was wrong. For years, the whole idea of track workouts for someone like me just didn’t make any sense. It’s bad enough to be slow when I’m out on the road, alone. Why in the world would I want to prove how slow I am by running in circles on a track with people passing me every few seconds? The answer is pretty simple: because I actually can improve by running on the track. We all can improve our running. Mind you, I have a firm grip on…

When you want to get to know someone fast, try going for a slow run together. To the rest of the racers, we just looked like a couple of aging men running and walking a 5-K. There was nothing particularly distinctive about us. We had graying and thinning hair, we were carrying a few extra pounds, and we were shuffling much more than we were charging. We had taken our place near the back of the pack, letting the younger and fitter men and women line up in front of us so they could take off in search of personal…

A new perspective on massage. I’m not ready to say that I was wrong. I am ready, however, to acknowledge that I might not have been completely right. How’s that for personal growth? A couple of months ago, I injured my back picking up a package, so I’ve been doing whatever I can to heal. One suggestion that Jenny – my wife and coach – made was to get a massage. She might as well have asked me to get a recreational root canal, since my experiences with massage therapists up to that point had been less than positive. My…

Runners should listen to – and then ignore – the voice inside their head. Ever hear a little voice in your head? Be honest. It doesn’t mean you’re crazy. Well, it might mean you’re crazy depending on what the little voice is telling you. I’m talking about that little voice that whispers what it thinks you should be doing. Sometimes the voice is called your conscience, when it thinks what you’re doing isn’t right. But there’s another voice that many of us hear. I know I do, or at least I used to. This is the voice of the Gremlin….

They were all over my parent’s house, those monuments to my childhood: the plaster cast of my hand, a Valentine’s card I made myself. Now, my home is filled with the same monuments to my son’s childhood: the wreath made of rotini pasta that gets hung on the door every Christmas, the rock with felt feet, head and tail that, if you have enough imagination, looks very much like a turtle. They are prized possessions. My home is also filled with the monuments of my return to childhood, of my return to a time of play and joy: my finisher’s…

Still waddling after all these years. This month I’m going to ask for a point of personal privilege. For those of you who don’t have “Robert’s Rules of Order” handy, a point of personal privilege is when, in the middle of a formal debate, someone feels the need to speak passionately about a topic not on the floor. So everyone moans and lets that person wax eloquent on a subject that’s only important to him or her. This is the 48th Chronicle to appear in “Runner’s World”. It is the end of my fourth year in this space – the…

The measure of a true runner has little to do with speed. Steve Prefontaine, arguably the heart and spirit of American distance running, once said, “To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.” At first glance, that may not seem like a Penguin point of view. But it is. This summer at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon, on the very track where “Pre” established his dominance over his opponents and his demons, I saw that same spirit overcome some of the least suspecting runners. We had come to the University of Oregon for the first annual…