I’ve heard of the “24 hour flu” before, but a couple of weeks ago, I had a weird 48 hour case of plantar fasciitis. I had two previous bouts with PF, one that took over a month to get rid of completely, so as soon as I felt that sore feeling on my left heel, I knew what I was dealing with. It started soon after a 6 mile run on a Sunday afternoon. By…
It’s been a long time (5 years!) since I last blogged about listening to audiobooks while running. Since then, I’ve made some new discoveries about audiobooks. First, if you are a fan of “The Princess Bride” (and come on, who isn’t?), then you would really love the audiobook version of Cary Elwes’ As You Wish. This was the lead actor’s memoir of his time on the set of the movie production. What’s so neat about…
It was the best of times, and it was the worst of times… Well, not exactly, but the two places that I visited over the summer did offer a pretty striking contrast in climate-friendliness to running. Taipei First up was Taipei, Taiwan, in mid-June. Taipei has a latitude of 25 degrees N, which is about the same as Miami, Florida. That means that summer is hot and humid. I had to get up by about…
The other day, I came across this article about a research paper that found a correlation between brown eyes and seasonal affective disorder (SAD). I found this interesting because when my family moved to Portland, I had wondered whether we might be subject to SAD. After all, SAD is “prevalent” in Portland, according to an OHSU doctor. As it turned out, we had no trouble adapting to the Pacific Northwest. We all like how late it…
It’s hard to believe, but I used to hate running. I managed to stay fit in law school thanks to Ultimate, which, like soccer and lacrosse, involves a lot of running but seemed tolerable because I was chasing the disc (or the person I was covering). After law school, however, I was forced into the real world, and I stopped playing Ultimate. Eventually I found my way to running, and my story there is a…
You know that common nightmare of waking up on the day of a college final exam after it’s already started? I don’t get that nightmare, although it’s possible that I’ve been the source of it for others given my day job. However, the other night, I had a variation involving – not surprisingly – running. In my dream, I found myself at a bed and breakfast in some kind of coastal town. I knew that the…
This is a common saying among runners, and of course, the general sentiment is a good one. It doesn’t happen to me very often, but there are those days when I just do not feel at all like running. Yet, invariably, after putting on running clothes, lacing up, and heading out, I start to feel good . . . and within a mile or two, I find myself wondering, “What could I have been thinking,…
This is my last Obsessed Fortysomething Runner post. No, I’m not quitting running. And no, I’m not leaving Run Oregon. I’m simply graduating to a new age group. On the good news front, I escape the often super-competitive M45-49 group, which includes a number of strong local runners like Jerry Mullins, David Hume, and Duwayne Olson. Yea for getting away (temporarily) from those guys! On the other hand, you know who is waiting to welcome…
“Daddy, are you going running today?” asked my son with excitement. Was it that he wanted to go running with me? Nope. You see, he has a Pokemon Go account but no smartphone, so mostly it’s my phone that gets used to catch Pokemon, battle in gyms, etc. Lately, on some occasions, I’ve gone running with the app on instead of listening to audiobooks, and I come back from those runs with a whole bunch…
One of my big non-running hobbies is boardgaming. The most obvious board game is probably Monopoly, but I tend to prefer games that don’t rely so heavily on luck and a single dominant strategy. I used to play wargames a lot back in the 1980s, and then stopped when I got to college. Then, a few years ago, my wife bought Ticket to Ride, and I rediscovered my love of board games. I should say…
