Four weeks into the training schedule for my first marathon and the magnitude of the run that I'm preparing for begins to set in. Less than a quarter of the way into training and my long runs on the weekend are pushing up into the longer runs I've ever done. As the weekly miles start to increase, I remember how hard it can be on my body. In week 7 of the 18 week program, I have a 14 miler which beats my half marathons for the longest runs I've experienced. That alone is a b

As the first two months of 2016 march swiftly on, I've started to feel nagging anxiety about my goal to complete a marathon this year. I had grand delusions that I would take two weeks off after the half I ran this past Thanksgiving and then dive headfirst into the 18 week Hal Higdon plan for a marathon. Somewhere in the first week of training, after more than the planned time off and amidst the holiday season, I got knocked off course. And around two months later, I'm only

Listening through recordings of my drumming from 5+ years ago, I sometimes feel a little pang like, "I don't know if I can still write stuff like that." On one hand, it's cool that I can look back at older stuff I wrote and not be utterly embarrassed by it. On the other, it does make me wonder if somehow I lost some chops between here and there. It's kind of a weird thing to think. I haven't taken any significant time off of playing. My musical tastes and listening habits

Building my running routines and morning routines has been a great part of my past couple years. While I've managed to stay on course for the most part, when I'm at home, I've found it exceedingly hard to transfer the same habits when I'm traveling anywhere. For the last week, I've been dogsitting out of state for my brother and his wife. I had grand illusions of knocking out my weekend long runs on the trails here and exploring their part of the world for my midweek runs.

Note: Yeah, this event was a couple months ago, but registration is open now so it's timely again! I had never really heard of distance relay races before my parents told me they were getting involved in one. They told me teams of up to 12 people ran from Raleigh, NC to Atlantic Beach, NC over the course of about a day and a half. That didn't have much effect on me and I told them I'd be an alternate for their team without knowing what I might be getting myself into. I co