Field Notes from The Proving

What happens when you’ve done everything you can—and you still don’t know if your body will make it to the finish? After months of training, injuries, physical therapy, missed long runs, and a knee that refused to cooperate, Chris arrived at the 2025 Marine Corps Marathon carrying more doubt than confidence. The goal had changed. Forget the perfect race. Forget the perfect time. Just finish. From...

There comes a point in every difficult season where you've done everything you know how to do—and you still don't know if it's enough. Going into October, the Marine Corps Marathon was only weeks away. The training was done. The fitness was there. But after months of injury, uncertainty, physical therapy, and constantly questioning my own body, something much harder had started to disappear: trust...

By the end of September, my body was capable of running 20 miles. Twenty-two miles. Maybe even the full 26.2. But injury does something more dangerous than cause pain. It creates doubt. You start thinking injured. Moving injured. Changing your stride, your breathing, your technique—making tiny adjustments to protect yourself until those tiny adjustments begin changing everything. In Episode 40 of...

I was one month away from the Marine Corps Marathon. The fitness was there. The work was almost done. I should have been standing at the top of the mountain feeling unstoppable. Instead, I felt like I was about to fall off. September was 90 miles of fear, pain, and doubt. A 17-mile run. A 19-mile run. A brutal 22-miler where my knee started giving out underneath me. For my entire life, I had one a...

After Disney, Mystic, Loudoun County, and a 1:32 breakthrough at Napa, confidence wasn’t building anymore. It was exploding. Running had become more than something I did. It was becoming proof of who I could be. With the Marine Corps Marathon now on the calendar, August became about building again: more miles, longer runs, physical therapy, recovery, speed, and an obsession with finding the next v...

Months of physical therapy. A knee that had nearly derailed everything. A brutal race through the hills of Loudoun County. And one goal I couldn't stop thinking about: 1:30–1:35. Napa to Sonoma was supposed to be the test. But Napa meant so much more than a race. It's where I got engaged. It's one of my husband and my favorite places in the world. And this time, we got to share it with friends who...

If May was the comeback, June was the warrior. After Loudoun County, I became obsessed with one thing: getting ready for Napa. More miles. More speed. More PT. Better recovery. Better shoes. Better nutrition. Better data. Whatever it took. But the harder I pushed, the more my knee started fighting back. Then, on June 28th, everything changed. On a random training run through my neighborhood, I ran...

I thought I had running figured out. Shamrock proved I could run a marathon. Disney proved I could run through the fear of injury. Mystic proved I could still race a half. Then I showed up in Virginia wine country with a little too much confidence. The Loudoun County Half Marathon wasn't asking whether I could run 13.1 miles. It was asking whether I could survive 13.1 miles of relentless rolling h...

Denise was nervous. I was cool as a cucumber. Mystic was her first-ever race—and the first time I got to watch someone I love step into the world of running that had completely changed my life. She took on the 10K. I took on the half. We started together, eventually went our separate ways, and chased two completely different finish lines. For me, 1:40:11 wasn't exactly the time I wanted. But someh...

After dropping out of the Philadelphia Love Run with a knee injury, I wasn't afraid of another race—I was afraid of what that injury meant. The Disney Springtime Surprise 10-Miler was supposed to be a fun vacation with my husband. Instead, it became the first real test of whether I could trust my body again. This wasn't about chasing a personal record. It was about proving to myself that one setba...

After completing my first marathon, something unexpected happened. This wasn't another race. It wasn't another training run. It was a birthday dinner with friends at Rails Steakhouse in Montville, New Jersey—a night that quietly changed everything. What started as me reflecting on the Shamrock Marathon turned into something much bigger. By the end of the night, Denise had committed to running her...

I thought it was just another running injury. After the Philadelphia Love Run, my knee gave out—and what I thought would be a few days of recovery became one of the defining stories of my entire running journey. I searched everywhere for answers. ChatGPT. Running forums. Reddit. Everyone had a diagnosis. None of them felt right. This was the first time I stopped trying to outwork the problem and f...

Two weeks after finishing my first marathon, I thought I was ready to race again. I convinced myself that because I had just completed 26.2 miles, a half marathon would be easy. I rested, stretched, hydrated, and believed my fitness was enough to overcome recovery. I was wrong. At mile 3.5 of the Philadelphia Love Run, my left knee gave out. What started as excitement quickly turned into one of th...

You spend months training for one moment. Then it's over. Everyone talks about crossing the finish line. Almost no one talks about what happens after. The silence. The emptiness. The emotional comedown that follows accomplishing something you've poured your entire life into. In this episode, I reflect on the crash that came after my first marathon—the realization that the high doesn't last, that p...

I thought running one marathon would be enough. For an entire week after crossing the finish line, I kept telling myself it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I had accomplished every goal I set: finish the race, run every mile, and break four hours. There was nothing left to prove. Then something changed. The more I reflected on what I had done, the more I realized I wasn't satisfied—I was hook...

I thought finishing the marathon would change everything. Months of training came down to a few hours. The finish line was crossed, the medal was earned, and for a brief moment it felt like the world had changed. Then came the next day. The congratulations, the conversations, the excitement, and the realization that life keeps moving. This episode explores the strange space between achievement and...

What does it actually feel like to run your first marathon? In this episode of Field Notes from The Proving, I take you through every stage of my first marathon—the anxiety before the start, the confidence of the first half, the loneliness of the back half, the wall at mile 20, and the emotional final stretch that changed me forever. On March 16, 2025, I completed the Shamrock Marathon in Virginia...

I thought the night before my first marathon would feel terrifying. Instead… it felt quiet. In Episode 25 of Field Notes from The Proving, I talk about driving to Norfolk, Virginia for the Shamrock Marathon, walking into the massive race expo for the first time, crying on the phone because I couldn’t believe I’d actually made it there, picking up my bib, buying race gear, laying out my clothes, ea...

Months of training. Two unofficial half marathons hidden inside marathon prep. A 20-mile run on a cruise ship. Then suddenly… the plan tells you to stop pushing. In this episode of Field Notes from The Proving, I talk about something I never expected to be difficult: tapering. Cutting miles before my first marathon didn’t feel like recovery — it felt like losing fitness, losing momentum, and quest...

What do you sacrifice when you become obsessed with proving something to yourself? In Episode 23 of Field Notes from The Proving, I reflect on completing a 20-mile run during a family cruise through Europe while training for my first marathon—and the realization that discipline sometimes comes with tradeoffs. This isn’t about regret. It’s about fairness, perfectionism, ambition, and questioning wh...

A vacation through Europe. London. France. Belgium. Netherlands. Germany. Family. Drinks. Laughs. Late nights. And in the middle of all of it… training for my first marathon. This episode of Field Notes from The Proving tells the story of running 20 miles on a cruise ship while docked in Hamburg, Germany — resetting a treadmill over and over again in 30-minute increments, converting kilometers to...

At some point, training stops feeling like a hobby… and starts becoming your entire life. In Episode 21 of Field Notes from The Proving, I talk about the moment marathon training fully took over — the obsession, sacrifice, structure, and identity shift that happens when chasing a goal starts consuming everything around you. January in New Jersey was cold, dark, and brutal. But by this point, I had...

January isn’t where motivation shows up. It’s where discipline is built. In Episode 20 of Field Notes from The Proving, I break down the real start of my 2025 transformation — not the goals, not the declarations, but the systems that followed. After writing down my goals on December 31st, January became the proving ground. Cold mornings. Dark days. No shortcuts. This was the month where everything...

What happens when you stop living for external validation… and finally decide to build a life that’s yours? In this episode of Field Notes from The Proving, I break down the moment everything changed — not through action yet, but through decision. 2025 became The Goal Year. After proving to myself in 2024 that discipline works, I asked a bigger question: What would happen if I applied it to an ent...

In this episode of Field Notes from The Proving, I break down the moment everything changed. After completing two half marathons in 2024, I proved to myself that I could commit to something and follow through. But instead of feeling fulfilled… I still felt empty. That realization led me to something deeper: a full life audit. I started questioning everything — my habits, my mindset, my identity, a...