Matthew Roberts

Anybody who demands your respect is undeserving of it. Real respect is earned, not required.

For a little while earlier this year, I was biking twice a week pretty consistently. Sometimes I would ride outside, and other times I would plop my bike on my very cheap, very dumb turbo trainer, and spin while reading emails. Then, as always happens when I try to do Read more…

Avery (and Hadley to a lesser extent, too) loves bugs. All kinds of insects, gastropods, arachnids, worms, and anything else small and crawly fascinate her. I am pretty sure she is the only five-year-old girl I know who calls spiders, grubs, and maggots “cute.” Fortunately, I don’t have any photos Read more…

A lot has happened on the homestead in the past few months. Our friend Dave came over and we continued working on the split rail fence, and it now stretches into the backyard. Only 400 more linear feet to go! On the chicken front, unfortunately tragedy struck one night a Read more…

One of the topics I’ve written most about on this site is my streak of sub-60-minute Boilermakers. I started in 2007, and have run under one hour every year since then. My sights are set on Paul Humphrey’s record of 23 years in a row going under 60 minutes, although Read more…

Like almost everybody else in America these days, the Roberts family has spent a lot of time in our house and out in the yard, and trying not to venture out into the big, scary World. Unlike almost everybody else in America these days, we have liked this so much Read more…

In my last post, I mentioned that instead of shooting for personal bests, I am now trying to obtain as many Explorer Tiles as I can. I started out the year with 869 tiles, and a max square of 10×10. Since the pandemic started, my rate of progress has slowed, Read more…

As you may have read in an earlier post, I have stopped chasing personal bests, for a number of reasons. This has allowed me to search for new challenges and opportunities, instead of the usual “run as much as I can and try to run as fast as I can” Read more…

Editor’s (aka Matt’s) note: I asked Ruth to write a race report for the recent Syracuse Half Marathon because I felt that this race was the culmination of all her hard work recently, and perfectly reflected how she has been able to improve and smash her goals. Please take all Read more…

When I was in my twenties, training was easy. I would just run as many miles as I could, and complete progressively harder and bigger workouts leading up to a goal race. Then, after a brief respite, I would start all over again, trying to get just a few more Read more…