All right, the sex part was to catch attention. But I didn’t lie! I enjoy sex. Look at this story of mine. I don’t like it when writers put links to their stories (self-promotion!) but I think this piece is one of my best. Last night my wife went to bed naked Fire that burnsalexeisorokinstories.medium.com Now onto vegetables. I’m not vegetarian…

I just came across this article in my social media feed: Investors bet on meat grown in a lab as interest in plant-based foods cools Venture capitalists invested $2 billion in cultivated protein last year, according to PitchBook data.www.cnbc.com Around a year ago I thought I’d try plant-based meats. I cooked Impossible Burger a couple of times. It was all right. I eat meat but not a lot. I eat a lot of vegetables, I love vegetables. At…

From an ever-improving sub-3-hour marathon runner in his 40s (me!) I’m bragging a bit. I’m good at running but I’m not that special. There are folks who’ve run many fast marathons. I only ran two sub-3-hour marathons so far. Last year I ran 2.57 and in May of this year…

I ran a 2.49 marathon a couple of months ago but this story, for once, is not a running-bragging story. Well, I do love running! For the last two years, I’ve been running 50–70 miles a week. I’m not running this week. It finally happened, the inevitable — I’m injured…

On the one hand, you can’t outrun a bad diet. That I agree with. We vastly underestimate the calories we consume or we just don’t estimate them at all. The other day my oldest son asked me to drive him to a local shopping plaza to get ice cream, so…

When my mom sees me eat, she says I’m like a goat. I wished she meant the slang version of “goat” as in the greatest of all time but her English isn’t that good. She talks of me devouring vegetables. …

I am not a nutrition expert but I care a lot about maintaining a healthy weight because it helps my running. Running is my passion. I hope to run a 2.45–2.40 marathon later this year, having recently run 2.49 in a marathon in Southern California. I don’t follow any restrictive…

In the fall of last year, I ran a 2.57 marathon and recently improved to 2.49. This was a huge improvement over my four-hour marathons a little over a decade ago (I’m forty-two now, so I was in my late twenties then). Back then I didn’t take marathons seriously. My…

I’m an athlete. For some strange reason, I’m thinking of the movie The Fly. The metamorphosis has been that dramatic. I’m a runner. I’ve always enjoyed running but two years ago I started to run more. I started to run consistently. My consistency became an uncompromisable habit. …

Consistency. Consistency. Here’s my advice: if you start googling for how to run a marathon in under…, you’re failing already. You’re not a runner. Because you are looking for a magic recipe, instead of always being a runner. Always being a runner, in my view, is being consistent about running…

My 2.49 marathon is now behind me, a lovely chapter in my running journey book! I’m not hurting! That makes me proud. I remember my first couple of marathons more than a decade ago. They were just over four hours. I couldn’t lift my ass from my bed or chair…

That’s all I want to be… Maybe it’s my goal, not my dream. I was an unathletic kid, growing up in Soviet Moscow. I did swimming between the ages of six and nine, but that was about it. Already in the second grade — I was around eight years old…

I have bad habits too, of course, but these ones help maintain my physical and mental health: $50 worth of oats, almonds, and honey (I mean that I eat oats with almonds and honey) can sustain at least one-third of my nutrition for many weeks. …

I’m not a vegan or vegetarian. In the last couple of years, I have reduced my meat intake to a bare minimum but I’d still have a piece of steak every now and then or even a fried sausage. As I’m devouring my third bowl of kale now after my…

My wife, who is a tennis coach, has a running track session for her students once or twice a week. I joined her session a few days ago. These days I’m so arrogant about my running that I never run with anyone because usually it’s outside of my running routine…

Actually, I haven’t been “preparing” for a race. I haven’t even signed up yet. I’ve been running with perfect consistency for almost two years. My commitment to consistency helped me to run my first sub-three-hour (2.57) marathon in October 2021 and a 1.19 half marathon in February 2022. I’m proud…

A friend told me that breaking the 3-hour marathon mark can be underwhelming. It’s just a number, he said and once you get there, it’s possible to feel empty. Bullshit! Yesterday, at 41 years of age, I ran a 2.57.04 marathon in Southern California and it felt like an achievement…

The more I run the less I like the construct “sub-something”. My running routine has no goals attached to it. Running has become my life’s cornerstone habit, my passion. It can’t be defined by some tactical goal or past result. My results are the outcome — checkpoints — of my…

I could never imagine I’d write a post like this, because I’m not into sports drinks. On a hot summer day or after a very intense run, I might grab a Gatorade — at our house we usually have a box from Costco because my kids do sports, but I…