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 something ancillary to running, my motivation faded and I found myself only running again. In a turn of events that nobody could have seen coming, 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 of her with those three creepy-crawlies, but we have been finding a ton of praying mantises around our house lately. This is exciting for both 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 few weeks ago. We had started keeping the chicks outside in the coop at night, which went well for a few days. Then one day, 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 I have quite a ways to go before I even am in the same ballpark as him. My friend Mike Brych, though, would have tied 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 that we want to continue it as much as possible. To that end, Ashlie and I have decided to start a little homestead on our 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, but I still have increased those to 994 tiles with a max square of 16×16! As you can see, I have filled out all of 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” in days of yore. One of my challenges that I have taken up recently is to try to run every road and street in both 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 her kind remarks about me with a grain of salt, as she is obviously still on a PR high. Now, on to her report! I’ve 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 miles per week out of my legs than I did in the previous cycle. It was time consuming, and it took a lot of effort, Read more…
For the three of you that read this blog, you know that I had idiotically signed up for a sprint triathlon this year. I wanted to do something outside my comfort zone, and that would encourage me to do some cross training and learn how to swim. Well, I got out of my comfort zone, I did some more cross training, but that last item is a bit of a sticky one. Even after going Read more…