I love late summer. Even though I’m not a cold weather person and don’t look forward to winter or the long siege of darkness, I do love this time of year, when berries hang fat on the bush and everything is so green and lush and wet from the inevitable rains. Today I took Beebs for a […]

A few days ago, I did the most exciting of things. I laced up my trail shoes for the first time in over a month and took off up in the mountains to play in the mud. Oh, I missed you, dirty Adidas shoes. I still can’t run but I can walk very, very fast. […]

Imagine my surprise when a friend emailed that I had won the marathon today. “Check out the headline,” she said. I immediately opened the Anchorage Daily News Website. And there was my last name splayed across the page. “Ritchie runs to Big Wild Life marathon win,” it proclaimed in big, bold letters. Of course, it wasn’t me but […]

Today we got an unsettling phone call from our friends out in Hatcher Pass. Rocky, their 17-year-old dog, had just died. We knew it was coming. Rocky, half Rottweiler and half German shepherd, had been sliding downhill for over a year. When I housesat for them in January, Rocky could barely walk, his back legs lurching […]

Well, look who is still alive. I’ve been taking a short hiatus from writing about running because, you see, I have been unable to run. After five years of running injury free, the exercise gods struck, and they struck hard. Two weeks ago I hurt my foot during the last mile of the Master’s 10K Race. […]