Just the Basics
This post is about training to maximize your outdoorsmanship, stretching your capabilities. It’s about being ready to paddle, portage and carry a pack.
Read more "Just the Basics"running
Where the Wild Things Are
I need miles today to start my week right and I head for one of Pittsburgh’s major parks to find them. Mine is one of two cars in the gravel lot I choose despite the fact that this is a weekend morning and there’s no shortage of athletes in the vicinity. Covid fears reign in […]
Read more "Where the Wild Things Are"In the Long Run
Where do we end up if we never start? I don’t write a lot about my running. It’s an activity that kind of fades into the background, a discipline that keeps me from putting on too much weight, keeps me physically ready for adventure and keeps my mind healthy. Any reader of this […]
Read more "In the Long Run"Lessons from the Long Trail
I’m a runner and I even race, occasionally. Like many of us, I started out with little 5k fun runs and progressed to ultramarathon class. (To some ultra runners, my ultras would still be twice-round-the-block fun runs.) As a runner and observer of runners, I’ve noticed a general trend: Youthful runners right out […]
Read more "Lessons from the Long Trail"A Farewell to Winter
I don’t think animals worry a lot. Even when there’s snow covering the green grass in April, the birds are moving right ahead with nesting and the groundhogs just wait for some afternoon sun to dispel the chill. The animals simply move ahead with life, providing for their own needs and starting a 2018 generation […]
Read more "A Farewell to Winter"America: Bastion of Liberty, Land of the Free
A practical scheme for maximizing Liberty may have been the greatest of American inventions and worth remembering this Independence Day. All good things spring from Liberty, beginning with freedom of conscience and then manifesting as our choice of occupation, our many avocations and the causes we support, to enumerate just a few of […]
Read more "America: Bastion of Liberty, Land of the Free"The Life Aquatic
The morning’s run actually began with a walk, just trying to loosen up the legs after last night’s speed lap around North Park here in the Pittsburgh suburbs. The run also began with rain. Pavement passed under my feet through the first mile and a half, the rain splashing loudly and heading quickly to the […]
Read more "The Life Aquatic"More Celebration of Trails
Running several miles on a developing rail trail earlier today, I thought again about how much good these flat paths do me here in western Pennsylvania. The wealthy industrialists who saw these corridors built could never have imagined their ultimate purpose. They were only seeking profit at the time of construction but in so doing, […]
Read more "More Celebration of Trails"September’s Been Good
I’ve been busy living the dream over the last month, I guess. This is the glamorous life of a successful author – traveling for book events, writing further pieces and building toward more big things and grander schemes. But, of course, mine are successes of scale and life remains anything but glamorous overall (I’d worry […]
Read more "September’s Been Good"Run for Your Life
I’m on day two of my spring running program and it shouldn’t be this way. I should have been running right through the winter but I let it lapse, for no good reason. This winter especially left me with no excuse – it was exceptionally mild. I’ve always taken running as the basis of whatever […]
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the dying fish 