Kansas gets the Ultrarunning Magazine cover. I think this is the second year in a row for Heartland. I imagine you can see why.

I haven't written in a while. Maybe you've noticed, and maybe you haven't. The funny thing is that my blog traffic really hasn't changed a ton, since my backlog of coffee posts has always drawn far more readers than any of my running business. Even though those posts are really quite old now, that's still the case. Which is cool. If somehow I'm still teaching someone what the fuck a cappuccino actually is, or getting someone to realize that geeking out about milk steaming is a thing people do, then I'm happy.

So what am I doing? Running. Writing. Still, just not mixing the two as much. I'm 95,000 words deep in an attempt at a novel. Which... I don't even really want to call it that, because a novel is a thing that exists outside of Google docs, and I don't expect this ever will. That's not a statement on my perception of its quality - though I'm not saying it's great either - so much as it's a statement about myself. That is, I really don't want anyone to read it, because, blogging aside, I'm really a very private person. And sharing fiction is an absurdly personal thing. More so, I think, than telling you what's actually happening in my life. (This is still true, I think, even if the work in question is very far away from autobiographical fiction, which this is.) So it's a big fucking Google doc that I don't anticipate sharing anywhere. Let's go with that. Naming conventions aside, I'm really enjoying the process. Which is the point, sort of.

I'm going to transition that into a brief aside about running. Because I'm enjoying that process too. I'm running well, consistently, and healthfully. (Healthfully? Healthily? How would you even say that? I'm not hurt. How about that?) The plan is to run a good road half in April. 'Good' being subject to my whims and mood at the time, probably. As with everything. But I'm feeling fit, so the time shouldn't suck.

As for the fall... I have no idea. The idea behind running (or attempting to run) a decent road half this spring was so I could spin that into an attempt at redeeming my disastrous first attempt at a road marathon. But right now, I don't really know. Running to fix a negative feels less interesting to me right now than just doing what I enjoy. And while that may seem an arbitrary dichotomy, it doesn't feel like one to me right now. So maybe I'll decide 'fuck it' and try a 100. Maybe I'll just stick with this half marathon stuff, because the training for it has me feeling really good, basically all the time. I don't know, but I really hope I'm done writing by then.