Guess what I’m doing again? Hello, Brooks! Did you miss me? Yep, I started running this past weekend. I was excited, and I was scared, too, because I didn’t know how my foot would hold up or how I would hold up, either. I hadn’t run for eight weeks. I knew it wouldn’t be easy. […]

Yesterday I ran! Not for far and not for long but I did manage to run most of the way down The Dome, a smallish (by Alaska standards) mountain on the outskirts of town. It’s been raining here in Alaska and I spent most of Labor Day weekend with my butt planted firmly at my […]

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. […]

Today was a rest day, which means I ate everything in sight. Luckily we don’t keep much unhealthy food in the house, but we do have this: It’s SO good. Plus it was on sale at Fred’s, which makes it even better. It was a rest day because MM and I crammed a week’s worth of […]

This ran in the Anchorage Press this week. Steep Ascents Cinthia Ritchie Anchorage Press Each year at the start of the Mount Marathon Race, before the gun goes off and the madness begins, I stare up at the peak for a long and silent moment. It always looks so green and shadowed and immense, and I feel […]

Oh, what an agonizingly glorious Mount Marathon Race! Or at least that’s how I feel now, sitting on the comfy couch and stuffing my face with pretzels. Twenty-four hours ago as I was struggling up the mountain, I felt quite a bit differently. The Mount Marathon Race takes place down in Seward, my old stomping ground. It’s […]