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THE ARTICLES

Links to a few of my stories

Listening to Wisdom From a 10-Year-Old Son About His Head Injury

New York Times (November 28, 2009)

 

“Dad, I’m scared. I only have one brain, and I don’t want to hurt it playing football.”

 

My son Will, his 10-year-old eyes filling with tears, was trying to decide whether to play quarterback in his peewee game against Roosevelt Elementary. Ten days earlier, he’d taken a helmet-to-helmet hit during practice and possibly, although we really don’t know, sustained a concussion. Now I wanted to help him make the right choice — if only I knew what that was.

A Psychological Twister

New York Times (May 28, 2011)

 

The earliest warnings came from my younger son’s school.  “Due to the threat of severe weather this evening,” intoned the robotic recorded voice on my cellphone, “fifth-grade promotion at McKinley Elementary has been rescheduled.” A quick look at the National Weather Service Web site confirmed my worst fears: tornadoes. The Rapture, it seemed, might still arrive after all.

New Year New You: Way of the Renegades

Runner's World (January 2011)

Sixteen miles.

 

The words keep invading my consciousness. They shove aside any reassuring thoughts that four months of training for the Chicago Marathon should have wired into my brain. It's two minutes until the gun—I should be thinking about how I haven't missed a single day of training, or how I just ran my fastest 5-K since college. Instead, I'm obsessing over how my longest training run was a mere 16 miles.

In Too Deep

Runner's World (October 2011)

Running the 42-mile rim-to-rim-to-rim trail into and out of the Grand Canyon was a bad idea. Trying it a second time was just insane.

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