Graveyard Island on Lake Inari

The Mission

In Finland’s boreal forests, just above the Arctic Circle, the sprawling Lake Inari is peppered with thousands of small islands. One island known as Graveyard served for centuries as a cemetery for the ancient Sami, Lapland’s semi-nomadic reindeer herders. When the pandemic ends I will journey thousands […]

The other day I uncovered a box buried in the closet of my childhood bedroom. Inside was a pair of girls track spikes, grey with a purple Nike swoosh. I turned the shoes over, pressing my fingers against the tiny metal fangs. Twenty years ago, the spikes were sharp enough to draw blood. But time […]

May 23, 2021, 25k, Boalsburg, PA

On October 27, 2019 I made the biggest mistake of my running career. Yes, worse than the time I accidentally wore jewelry at a track race, disqualifying me from the state meeting and ending my high school season. Worse than the time I listened to Keith’s advice […]

Farewell, WUS house!

The year 2019 was not just the end of a decade, but an end of an era for the WUSsies, with the sale of the WUS house in August. Sure, it hasn’t really been the ‘WUS house’ in ages. But it’s symbolic. WUS has also had to survive the arrival of […]

I had completely forgotten how to run a marathon.

The old me had a very simple recipe for running a marathon:

Do the least possible training without blowing all plausibility of finishing a marathon. This essentially amounts to at least one training run over 13 miles.On the morning of the race, pile your heart, […]