However, the speaker’s presentation did indeed inspire me to settle on a more conventional strategy than “just run your guts out from the start and try to hang on at the end.” These were his six suggestions:
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As it turns out, the vintage sports car is hibernating during Montreal’s long winter. It also appears that she is in need of a bit of work to be roadworthy again, which is in contrast to last August when Steve reported she was running great. Her oil pressure relief valve may be sticking and the brake master cylinder is leaking now. Fortunately, Steve has a whole school bus of spare parts and the time and energy to tackle these issues. (more…)

So of course I was delighted when she and Dave invited me over one night for a dinner party. Make that a Chinese dinner party. The next day, after all, was the start of Chinese New Year. (more…)

These are questions Alene posed in her ultrarunning blog. The explanation is that it was the 3rd Annual Human Powered Brewery Tour — as organized by Scott and Celeste — and this year, a bunch of us wore costumes to draw greater attention to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease. We hoped that people who saw superheroes and cowgirls running or biking down the street would ask us what we were doing and offer to make a contribution to the ALS Association. (more…)

This did not stop Lisa, Rob, Tori and I from stomping around in deep snow with shoes befitting of Big Foot. Rather, it just meant that we had to drive further up into the mountains to find ample powder. (more…)

In other words, Pontiac and Saturn are essentially dead. Kaput. Gone. No más. (more…)

But after successfully skiing down the green Roundup run twice at Snowy Range, we threw out that plan. (more…)

“Please note on your blog,” he told me, “that [Kenny’s wife] Amy was faster in the last race, and yet she’s still starting before me. Totally unfair!” (more…)

There was, however, a juggling unicyclist, a balancing act involving hoops and balls of the type you might see in a Suzanne Sommers infomercial, and a bunch of men tooting brass instruments to tell the story of Peter and the Wolf. (more…)

Mexico, therefore, was a delectable feast for my eyes. (more…)

Sarah absolutely loved the tour, but what turned out to be more exciting for me was a 1.5-hour, second-class bus ride back to Oaxaca. (more…)

For more about the cooking class, here’s a write-up by Sarah. (more…)

“You have too much air,” Marie confirmed. “And you have a fright.” (more…)

It wasn’t because the vehicle we were in was super stuffy or that the diesel fumes overwhelmed so the amount of oxygen in the air that I remarked about my impaired respiratory state. It was because my breathing was so constricted because Sarah and I were both sitting on the front passenger seat of a full taxi that had offered to take us back from Teotitlan del Valle to Oaxaca de Juàrez. Before you imagine that this taxi was a whale-sized 1960s Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme with a three-on-the-tree and bench seat the length of a sofa, let me assure you it was anything but. Instead, it was a compact 90s Nissan Sentra sedan with a stick shift on the floor and four other people (including the driver) already inside, hence the need to squeeze in like sardines. (more…)

Then again, there were two police officers standing in the bed of the pick-up truck which had just pulled over a four-door Renault Megane. One of Oaxaca’s finest was in the “ready, aim, fire” position while pointing a rifle at the sedan, “just in case.” (more…)

Considering the phenomenal year Nick has had in running (five first place finishes, five seconds, and two thirds in distances ranging from 10 kilometers to 100 miles), the only question in my mind was whether he would win a pumpkin or apple pie for finishing in the top three in his age group in the four-mile Fort Collins Thanksgiving Run. That and if I was going to run the race too. Given the prize money and consequent depth of the field (2,000 racers including Olympic-caliber marathoners), there was no way I was going to win a pie nor finish in even the top 10 in my age group. Plus, I had hardly been running in the last couple months. Maybe it was better to be a spectator with a warm cup of hot chocolate instead.

“Come on,” said Nick. “It’s a Thanksgiving tradition.” (more…)

Three days? I didn’t even have the big frozen bird yet. Then I read on the Internet, “The only safe way to thaw a frozen turkey is to place it in the refrigerator,” and soon I was panicking as much as a turkey being chased by a fox. (more…)

Forgetting about the race and waking up late is probably not the best way to get ready for a five kilometer run. Neither would being fully clothed in warm-up gear from head to toe while blabbing away with my friend Dana when buddy Nick (the race director and Dana’s wife) matter-of-factly stated, “Felix, you start in 30 seconds.” (more…)

“No, not for candy,” said Ryan. “For books.” (more…)

“I have been training all summer for the Tortoise and Hare races,” he declared, “and I have a strategy.

“The last few months I have just been sitting on my butt so that today I’ll be nice and slow. Then, as the series progresses, I’ll naturally get much faster. I’m going for the series win!” (more…)

Even though Tori has lived full-time in Colorado for over a year now and we’ve dinked around on plastic more times than she’d care to admit inside the local gym, we hadn’t climbed outdoors together in our adopted Rocky Mountain state until now. In fact, the last time we climbed together in aire libre was in March 2007 when we were in Boquete, Panama. That was 2.5 years ago. How odd. (more…)

These words resonated in my mind as I biked over to Walden for my annual double century. Never mind that this was not the Walden in Massachusetts where Mr. Thoreau lived the life of an ascetic between 1845 and 1847, but rather a town of 600 people 60 miles east of Steamboat Springs in Colorado. (more…)

I would have been glad to, but there was one problem: at the festival, I could find almost none of this. At a drinks stand there was lemonade, orange-ade, lime-ade and other fruity concoctions, but no peach-ade. The jams and jelly booth had plenty of jars containing strawberry preserves, grape jelly, apple butter, etc., but no peach jam. A pizza vendor only served wedges with cheese and pepperoni or sausage. None of the crafts tents featured any artwork of fruit. (more…)

Yes, after my amoeba-like wetsuit-laden SF Bay crawl at last month’s Alcatraz Challenge in which my goal was to Simply Not Drown, I decided to do a local event in calmer waters to test how well I truly could swim. There would be no wetsuit to help keep me afloat, no running (or biking) afterward to conserve energy for or to rely on to make up lost time. I’d just be wearing skimpy swim trunks, goggles and swim cap to race against the clock for a whole mile. A first in my life. (more…)

I fully believed it was possible, and after all my speed workouts on the Colorado State University track the last few months, it should have been. But belief ensures execution only as much as a good recipe and oven could result in great tasting cookies. For me it would require the near-perfect race where my pace would be at least as consistent as pre-made cookie dough from the grocery store. (more…)

She was right. But over the course of the year Tanya told us more about her idyllic little hometown tucked away in the western slopes of Colorado, about how she misses it more than anything else in the world. She further piqued our curiosity with reminders about how years from now, she intends to move back especially since she owns some land in the area. Happily, she invited us to join her on a camping trip there for a couple days during a week she was in Crawford visiting family. Road trip! (more…)

Turns out I was wrong. In fact, there were enough toproping opportunities next to the reservoir to satisfy our inner Spidermen for an entire afternoon. This was a happy “discovery” since Horsetooth is much closer to where I live in Fort Collins than any other outdoor rock climbing location I know of in Northern Colorado. In fact, after attending the Fort Collins Running Club’s annual picnic in Cottonwood Park, I was able to ride my motorcycle to the first place we climbed at — Rotary Park — in a mere five minutes. (more…)