I can't believe I know someone like this. And I'm married to him, too. Let me start with a number, because it's the fastest way to explain what I'm dealing with here: more than 10,000 miles. Not driven. Not biked. Run. On foot, one step at a time, across states and countries and an entire continent, almost always for somebody else's benefit. I live with this person. He leaves his shoes by the door like a normal man. He loves stand-up comedy, his favorite government agency is

A look back at fall 2025 and the summer of 2026 Vanlife 2025 route - 10/28 through 12/9 Between the fall 2025 vanlife trip and the one we just wrapped up, we crossed 25 states, spent 143 days, and covered 17,350 miles living out of a van. 2 trips, 143 days, 17,350 miles, 25 states We hit 15 national parks, cooked in the van more often than we ate out, and together logged 1,832.1 human-powered miles (cycling, running, hiking, walking, and paddling). Vanlife 2026 route - 4/20 t

We stood outside the camper van, faces turned upward, our breath visible in the cold night air. The sky was impossibly clear, the Milky Way blazing overhead. The Pleiades — usually easy to spot back home in Connecticut — were almost unrecognizable out here. We were 2,500 miles from home, in the Guadalupe Mountains, preparing to sleep in the van for the 12th night in 14 days. It was one of my favorite nights of the entire trip. This was our recent 6-week road trip: 6,000 miles

I'm writing this little blog post because I didn't want to let a 5-second locker-room comment take up space or overshadow a reason to celebrate.

My long, winding, broken - but healing - relationship with running Early Miles - My first encounter with “good pain” and “bad pain.” My relationship with running started in 2002. At 30, I was a new mom looking for the best way to squeeze exercise into a busy schedule. I’d always defaulted to cycling, but I knew that jumping on the bike involved a bit more planning and equipment, i.e., more time than just throwing on shoes and running out the front door. Running was the obviou

This post reflects on Shan’s 3000-mile run across the country in 2020. It’s a quick overview of the 4 months we were apart, with a peek...

I write this as I enter week 3 of fractured tibia recovery. I am feeling slightly better. Good things are happening in my body. I'm moving from the inflammatory to the reparative stage of bone healing. This is when the blood clots that form at the site of the fracture are replaced by something called a callus. A callus is a mass of mesenchymal stem cells that will differentiate into cells called chondroblasts and osteoblasts, the primary players in the formation of cartilage

~ On June 17, 2024, I broke my leg while slalom skiing ~ I'm starting this series of blog posts to document my recovery journey - which I am reframing as focused training for my first official marathon . I had planned to run the 2024 Hartford Marathon with Shan, but obviously, that's not happening. I'll shoot for something in 2025 - maybe the Hartford Marathon or maybe something different. Either way, my "focused training" will simply be a typical marathon training plan with

I consider myself an atypical mom. I swear like a sailor, I answer to "dude" or "bro", I appreciate 12-year-old boy humor. When they were...