Years ago, I applied to be a personal trainer in a gym. Taking one look at my runner’s body, the owner said to me, “Go work out for a couple of months and come back to reapply.” Happy as I was with my runner’s body, I never went back. But it occurred to me that […]
If you’re a runner, chances are that sometime in your running life you’ve done hill repeats. The rather simple idea of running up and down a hill may seem monotonous and unnecessary to some but, for a runner, hill repeats are an often-used method of improving fitness. The feel of your heart pounding in your […]
For the past two years, I’ve been writing a column on education for Personal Fitness Professional magazine. It’s given me a good opportunity to reflect on my own education, what it really means, and how it helps (or doesn’t help) my career. In the book Why We Run, zoologist and ultramarathon runner Bernd Heinrich […]
Muscles are the most accessible way we have to see what our workouts do to our bodies. However, despite how many compliments you get from your Instagram pictures taken following your workouts, what matters is not what your muscles look like, but what they can do. In the early days, it was the strength […]
I’ve been thinking about bones lately. Remember the jingle we learned as kids: “The hip bone is connected to the thigh bone, the thigh bone is connected to the knee bone, the knee bone is connected to the shin bone…”? That jingle can go on for some time since there are 206 bones in […]
I remember my mom telling my twin brother and me that I first walked when I was seven months old, and then when my brother got up to walk soon after, I pushed him back down and he didn’t get back up until months later. I guess my competitive nature was already evident. The […]
I ran the Carlsbad 5000 today, as well as a few other thousand meters after the race. It was my first appearance at a race since the race on the track in early January that was immediately followed by being hospitalized with blood clots in my calf veins and lungs. I registered for this race […]
I thought about holiness on my run today. Pretty heavy duty for a Sunday morning. Ever since I was diagnosed with blood clots in my legs and lungs last month, I have been feeling an overwhelming sense of guilt and responsibility to live a more righteous life. I feel like if I do the wrong […]
Happy Valentine’s Day! It’s only fitting to talk about my favorite body part on Valentine’s Day—the heart. From the time we’re teenagers scribbling cartoon hearts on our notebooks, we use the heart as a symbol of love. But it is also the most extraordinary muscle of our body. It is always working, from before we […]
As part of a recent routine physical, I got some blood work done and tested positive for a mutation of the methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) gene, which encodes the enzyme of the same name. MTHFR is a key enzyme involved in the metabolism of folate, which is involved in the production of red blood cells. Genetic […]