Tanner Garrity

If you’ll allow a quick mental trip back to peak quarantine, there was a point in the spring and summer of 2020 that the United States went through a running boom. Gym-less, commute-less, desperate for an outdoor mission of any sort, people took to their local streets and trails for solo, “social-distanced” efforts. The movement was clear and obvious enough (and copied in the cycling community, too) that you could see it for yourself just by looking out the window: a little highway of joggers, r…

It’s firmly marathon season: Berlin was last week, Chicago is this Sunday, and in a month, over 50,000 runners will descend on New York City. And yet...it doesn’t really feel like running weather out there, especially in states used to distinct shoulder seasons. It’ll touch 83°F in Illinois this week (twice). Thankfully, the current forecast for this weekend is showing highs of just 58°F; but if you’ve been training the last three to four months, you’re sweating a little bit. No matter h…

I broke one of my own rules the other night, scrolling social media for who-knows-how-long before bed. As a self-congratulatory wellness columnist, I tend to discourage the habit. It was the usual crap, until I landed on a clip of a former Rutgers nose tackle, from The Bronx, who’d stopped to chat with one of those now-ubiquitous sidewalk interviewers along West Drive in Central Park. The premise of the “show” was asking fit strangers how they stayed in shape, and the man certainly fit the b…

I broke one of my own rules the other night, scrolling social media for who-knows-how-long before bed. As a self-congratulatory wellness columnist, I tend to discourage the habit. It was the usual crap, until I landed on a clip of a former Rutgers nose tackle, from The Bronx, who’d stopped to chat with one of those now-ubiquitous sidewalk interviewers along West Drive in Central Park. The premise of the “show” was asking fit strangers how they stayed in shape, and the man certainly fit the b…

There’s a memorable scene in the Labrador season of Alone (the History Channel show on which competing survivalists are dropped off in the remote wilderness with bows and arrows and GoPros) where a guy named Benji walks out into the middle of a field and starts laughing like a maniac. He’d killed a beaver a couple days before and lived on his own in the upper reaches of the Canadian wilderness for more than three weeks, so on some level, this behavior seemed par for the course. But eventually, h…

The best pure hitter in this year’s edition of October baseball isn’t Ronald Acuña Jr., or Mookie Betts, or Freddie Freeman. It’s Luis Arraez of the plucky Miami Marlins. The Venezuela native is far from a household name, but he now has two batting titles on his shelf — one won last season, with the Minnesota Twins, and the other down in Florida this year. Arraez was so automatic in 2023 that he exited the All-Star Break chasing a .400 batting average. The last time anyone attained the mark…

Big Pedometer trained us to dutifully chase 10,000 steps a day. But as I’ve previously explored, a range of 5,000-8,000 steps per day is perfectly healthy for longevity-minded living. And besides, that conventional wisdom ignores the fact that all steps are not created equal. Some strides are faster or harder than others, and they deserve credit for the benefits they bring to the body. A day’s most difficult steps usually occur on the stairs. Climbing up any significant number of steps t…

Something astonishing happened at the 1980 Houston Marathon. A one-time Olympian named Jeff Galloway — who’d run cross country at Wesleyan with running royalty like Amby Burfoot and Bill Rodgers — finished in third place with a scorching time of 2:16:36. (That’s about a 5:15 mile pace.) But that wasn’t the amazing part; as impressive as breaking 2:20:00 over 26.2 is, runners have posted similar times in thousands of races over the decades. What you usually don’t see in a race of that len…

Last year, we spoke to an urban planner about Barcelona’s superillas concept, the city’s network of three-block by three-block sections, where car traffic is all but banned. “Superblocks create space for people,” Jackson Chabot said, invoking American grid cities like New York City, Chicago, Salt Lake City and Savannah, GA, where the design could theoretically be repeated. “The superblocks concept embodies the future all cities should aspire to, and precisely the type of city where I want to liv…

Last year, we spoke to an urban planner about Barcelona’s superillas concept, the city’s network of three-block by three-block sections, where car traffic is all but banned. “Superblocks create space for people,” Jackson Chabot said, invoking American grid cities like New York City, Chicago, Salt Lake City and Savannah, GA, where the design could theoretically be repeated. “The superblocks concept embodies the future all cities should aspire to, and precisely the type of city where I want to liv…

Though I’ve banged the drum on cold-water therapy for years, I’ve never been able to make it a consistent part of my fitness routine. The issue is access. I habitually partake in ice-cold Scottish rinses at the end of a shower, and whenever I’m on vacation near a coast, I make sure to jump into the surf after each morning run. Still, neither practice is as productive or as permanent as I’d like it to be. (And as we outline here, cold showers can’t really compete with cold plunges.) Blame New…

The folks behind the U.S. Steinholding Association have a pretty clear mission statement. In their words, the sport is for any fellow “maniac who wants to experience the thrill of holding a beer stein further from your mouth and for a longer amount of time than nature ever intended.” How long would that be? The founder himself, Jim Banko, once held a stein for 17 minutes, 11 seconds. In 2018, a man named Michael Tyler set the national record, lasting 21 minutes, 17 seconds. Steinholding,…

An old coach of mine used to say that our most hated exercises are simply the ones where we stand most to improve. It’s a frustratingly accurate observation. If you’re dreading a specific type of machine or move, it’s likely because you know that it hurts, and it’s going to get more painful before it gets any easier. Which is why, left to our own druthers, most of us are really good at pretending the exercise never existed in the first place. Planks are my fitness boogeyman. I despise t…

Over a quarter of American health clubs closed in the first 18 months of the pandemic, including Butchered Bodies, a gym run by Taylor Metzger in Dallas, Texas. There was a second where it looked all over — and then Metzger’s entrepreneurial spirit kicked in. A personal trainer with a background in interior design, who’d once crafted and sold pottery out of the back of his truck, Metzger adapted. “I moved my training sessions to my backyard,” he says, “where I crafted imaginative workouts.”…

In a recent appearance on The Tim Ferris Show, a tech CEO named Sam Corcos claimed that he has been “fully news sober” for nearly a decade. What does that mean? No news, no television, no articles, no social media. “No current events in any form,” he told an astonished Ferris. “I read Ryan Holiday’s book, Trust Me, I’m Lying, which really frightened me about the state of the media...[It was] originally a one-month experiment...[I decided] I’m just going to try a one-to-one replacement of rea…

If you worked out at the beach this summer, you probably owe a few hundred people an apology. They sat in traffic for hours just to sit on the sand for two, and your sweaty lunges blocked their view of the horizon. And yet — we don’t blame you. The beach is an incomparable arena for exercise, and anyone who’s out there bettering themselves deserves a pat on the back. We just recommend delaying your beach workouts a couple months later in the year. Fall beach workouts might sound unorthod…

I did a big shop at Trader Joe’s the other day, and drew the dreaded three-bag-walk-home. I must’ve stopped 15 times on the trip back. When I finally made it to my apartment, I collapsed on the couch, heaving. My carton of eggs had survived the struggle, but my heart rate was through the roof. The entire experience was humbling for a millennial currently in the midst of marathon training. It was also an eye-opening reminder that everyday tasks are difficult for anyone...but especially for ad…

The popular “10-3-2-1 rule” for better sleep urges us to cut out caffeine 10 hours before bed, food three hours before, work two hours before and screens of any kind one hour before. According to one report online, the average American bedtime is 11:45 p.m. So, in actual practice, the 10-3-2-1 approach would look something like this: Last call for coffee: 1:45 p.m. Last meal (or snack/dessert): 8:45 p.m. Last email read/replied to: 9:45 p.m. Last moments with a TV, phone or tablet: 10:45 p.m…

The sun’s soon going to be setting at around 4:30 in the afternoon. For some of us — like one of my colleagues, who waits all year to put on a fisherman’s sweater and sit in the darkest booth of a pub — this is cause for celebration. Shorter days are a time to hunker down and hamper expectations. These months represent an opportunity to cook more, light candles and fall asleep next to a fireplace with a book on one’s lap. You know: cozy shit. But “lane-shifting” seasonal habits don’t come ea…

Richard Maher tried everything: weight machines at discount gyms, treadmills, ellipticals, even fitness video games. “The list was long, and the time spent [attempting each] was short,” he tells InsideHook. He could never get a new workout routine off the ground. Even a stint with a personal trainer petered out. What was the issue? Maybe it started back in high school. Growing up, Maher was the only openly gay student in a conservative town. His classmates reminded him time and time again th…