When I first ventured to the US back in 2007 to take up an athletic scholarship, there were a number of cultural peculiarities foreign to this skinny little runner from Melbourne. The first was the prominence of tattoos. Everyone had them - all my teammates, and all the kids...
Keeping an Even Keel | Riding the Waves of Success and Disappointment
Over two consecutive weekends in February, I won two races. It’s been a while since I experienced back-to-back success like that. The successes I had over the previous four years were fewer and farther apart. And even now,...
David McNeill - Runner's Tribe
I recently had dinner with two dear friends, Benny and Rich. Our reunions are relatively few and far between, given Benny is in Sydney, and Rich lives on the other side of the (Yarra) river…far too far away for a comfy northsider. But in the...
The modern technological age - first the Internet, and more recently, the advent of social media - has made everyone an expert at just about anything imaginable. Us runners, or at least the obsessive-compulsive variety, are a particularly curious breed of expertise-seekers. We want to know what, when, and...
WHAT I THINK ABOUT WHEN I THINK ABOUT FOOD | A COLUMN BY DAVID MCNEILL
At the risk of being condescending, and calling all runners control freaks, my experience is that habitual runners (from the hobby joggers to the Olympic medalists) share qualities of being perfectionist, pedantic, meticulous, and non-compromising....
A Column By 2xOlympian, David McNeill
Betterment. It’s a virtue that defines what a competitive runner strives for with every training endeavour: to be better. But it’s also a virtue that defines almost every aspect of our lives. Being a better parent. A better cook. A better writer. Better at...
A column by David McNeill - Runner's Tribe
Too often in my career, I have walked off the track querying my performances; wondering why I ran so poorly when training pointed to something better…or wondering how on earth I ran as fast as I did when preparations had been poor....
How do we measure success? | A Column by David McNeill
Last weekend, I decided to call it quits on season: 2015. The human body is a lot like a computer: leave too many applications open at once for too long, and everything stops working as efficiently. The hard drive...
A quick warning to those who are about to read (or think they want to read): this is a long and boring account of the lessons I’ve learnt in running over the past six months. I apologize if you were looking for some entertaining stories, but if you don’t...
Don’t Skimp on the Hills | A Runner’s Tribe Column by David McNeill
When searching for company for my day-to-day runs during the week, often one of the barriers between running with someone and running alone is the choice of location. Most of the time, I don’t mind driving to...
