Gretchen McKay

Melissa Hughes has run dozens of races since her first 5K five years ago. So she knows exactly how it’s going to go down when she and her best friend run through the city on Sunday during the Pittsburgh Marathon.  Strangers shouting out their names. People pointing fingers. Most definitely there will be cheers, most of […]

Audrey Burgoon’s come-to-Jesus moment came at mile 18. It was her first marathon, in San Diego in 2006, and her training partner of four months had just hit the wall. Seeing him falter, she burst into tears. She did not know how to run by herself. Her coach asking why she was crying only made her […]

Megan Kruth still doesn’t know what sent her flying over her bike’s handlebars on Aug. 4, 2013. The Ironman triathlete and 17-time All-American collegiate swimmer had done training rides on that stretch of Babcock Boulevard near her McCandless townhouse hundreds of times. But that Sunday morning, she probably hit a bump in the pavement. When […]

As he lines up for Monday’s Boston Marathon, John Platt will feel the same jitters as every runner, plus a few of his own. Did I train hard enough? Will I make it up Heartbreak Hill? At what mile will I go blind? The Moon resident’s feet always are numb. It will feel like he’s […]

A love of running did not come naturally to Lauren Moran. If anything, the Baldwin native considered moving her legs forward in anything faster than a slow crawl as punishment — and she was on both the soccer and track teams in high school. “I hated to run,” says Ms. Moran, 34, of Bloomfield. “For […]

For months after her older brother Allan’s suicide in November 2002, Amy Jacobson was numb. It was as if the Maryland college student had fallen into a big black hole of nothingness where the only emotion that churned inside her body, after the initial shock wore off, was total detachment. Allan had been the brainy […]

Hannah Camic gets a look when she’s running that flies in the face of the chronic lung disease she was born with. She doesn’t smile so much as she glows, as if lit from within. This is no small feat when you’re double digits into an early morning workout that could include as many as […]

When Eleven Contemporary Kitchen celebrated its 10th birthday this past June, executive chef Derek Stevens went all out. The four-course tasting menu he created for the Strip District restaurant awed and amazed: Some 200 guests dined on such gourmet delights as Fede pappardelle tossed with morels, veal sweetbreads served atop lobster risotto, and blueberry tart stuffed with lime curd and cheesecake. For his own 40th birthday next month, Chef Stevens will again push himself to the limit. […]

    A former crack addict who used to sleep in abandoned houses, Monica Craft isn’t your typical runner. In fact, she walked a lot more than she jogged when she stepped onto the track at Schenley Oval Sportsplex at Schenley Park in Oakland last week for a mid-morning workout. Clad in a corduroy jacket […]