The “Penguin Chronicles” actually began in 1995 as a series of e-mails to a group called The Dead Runners Society. At that time the Internet was much smaller than it is now and most of the users were either academics or government workers. Marlene Cimons, a member of the DRS, sent several of the e-mail columns to the editors of “Runner’s World” and the rest is history. This column was one of the original e-mails, written in September 1995. Over the years, I’ve seen some really fast runners. I’ve actually known some pretty fast runners. And, I guess I’d say…

I spent most of last week at the Walt Disney World Marathon Weekend. Yep. I know. A weekend is a weekend. Two days. But this weekend is now a week and that’s great. The first time I went to, what was, the WDW Marathon Weekend was in 1999 as part of the Runner’s World Pace Team. I couldn’t have been more excited. I had only been to Disney World once before, in 1974, when my son was 3 years old. Walt Disney World in 1974 was The Magic Kingdom, at that was about it. You bought packs of tickets that…

Unfinished business We were screaming at the top of our lungs and yelling his name. There was no way he didn’t hear us, but it didn’t matter. He was focused. He was in the zone. He was in another place and another time. Nothing was going to distract him. On this day, in this race, he would cross the finish line. He never talked about it before the race. He’s never talked about it since. Anyone who was there, though, saw the unmistakable look of a man facing down a memory that had haunted him for years. It wasn’t simply…

Runners, and walkers, seem to be getting lot of attention lately. And not the kind that we want. Or at least it might not seem that way. First someone wrote about how we were the slowest generation of runners. Of course, that’s not true. World records at nearly every distance are being set all the time. We, the less fast, are not doing anything to prevent the really fast from getting faster. Then they said we didn’t care about how fast we were. As evidence they pointed out that the “Color Runs” weren’t even timed. Imagine that. A group of…

You might be surprised what Nietzsche and your running buddies have in common. The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche really got a bad rap. Either that or he needed a better publicist. There was that whole “God is dead” business that upset so many people and then there’s the “That which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger” quote that’s attributed to him. I actually read one of my favorite Nietzsche quotes in an Outward Bound handbook. In writing about mountain climbing, our boy Friedrich says, “Exhaustion is the shortest way to equality…” I’ve never climbed a mountain so I can’t attest…

A few things that New York City Marathon runners – and spectators – can teach the world. One of the biggest thrills of my former life as a trombonist was working with Frank Sinatra. And one of the biggest thrills of working with Sinatra was performing “New York, New York” – it just doesn’t get any better than that. So standing with more than 35,000 runners on the Verrazzano Narrows Bridge at the start of last year’s ING New York City Marathon and listening to Frank blasting through the speakers made me more than a little emotional. It is, after…