The Full-Throttle Waddle
All runners eventually get asked the question: "Why do you run?" The question often is asked by someone who's thinking about starting. Sometimes it is asked by a person like I once was-someone who truly doesn't understand the act of running, let alone the sport. Most runners have their own answer to "Why do you run?" Their responses usually have to do with how running makes them feel or look or think. Some enjoy the solitude of running, while others appreciate the social aspects. The answer often tells you more about the person than about running...

Number One
Looking up, I see the finish banner and clock. I pick up the pace, releasing the energy I’ve been saving for the final kick. I am gasping for air; my heart is pounding. I am going to have a PR. I am going to break 30 minutes for 5-K. What?...

The Metamorphosis
I wasn’t always a penguin. I wasn’t always as slow as I am now. I used to be much slower! It took 40 years to become so overweight and out of shape that running a mile and running a marathon were equally unthinkable...

Waddling Through History
Yes, I was there. Through the most unlikely cosmic hiccup, my name was drawn in the Boston lottery. I ran the 100th not because I possessed the talent, but because I had the audacity to put my name on a postcard. Destiny, it seems, has a sense of humor...

Survival of the Slowest
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...

Embrace Your Local Penguin
Of all the changes that running has brought to my life, maybe the most important one is my awareness of my need for people. Having spent most of my first 40 years as a musician, I became accustomed to spending hours alone in a practice room. The practice room became a sanctuary, a safe haven from the pressures of work and relationships and family...

Buzzard Bait
I should have known from the name. All week long I kept hearing about running up Buzzard Bait Hill. The veterans talked about it in hushed tones. The first timers, like me, listened intently as they regaled us with stories of years past. As our day to take on the hill approached, the stories got more and more preposterous. After all, how hard could it be, I thought...

A Decade of Hope
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...

Prized Possessions
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 on which is glued felt feet, head, and tail that, if you have enough imagination, looks very much like a turtle. They are prized possessions...

Finding Your Way
The Shortest Distances isn't always a straight line.
Some of the best parts of being a runner have nothing to do with running. As one who got active later in life I keep finding new and interesting challenges that I would have never even considered before I became a runner. Knowing how difficult is was to overcome the inertia of my early life, and knowing that I did, has given me the courage to try almost anything...