Reporting

Ten miles into the Rock ’n’ Roll Philadelphia Half Marathon in September, Desiree Linden was about 50 seconds ahead of the second-place women’s finisher, Kellyn Taylor. A half-mile later, though, she touched a hand to her right side, and her flat raceday expression turned into a grimace. She slowed. She walked. She stopped.

Last summer, I started what is turning out to be a lifelong quest: to visit all of the 417 patches of this country that are overseen by National Park Service. This doesn’t just mean the 60 spots that are designated National Parks, but also all of the national battlefields, military parks, historic sites, memorials, lakeshores, and seashores overseen by the NPS.

I’ve been to the highlights, such Yellowstone, Grand Teton, and Glacier. But being a completist, on a warm June afternoon, I headed up to Hyde Park, New York, home of to the Vanderbilt Mansion National Historic Site, as well as National Historic Sites for Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. I took pictures and uploaded them to Instagram, using the NPS-suggested hashtag of #findyourpark.

Thirty-five years ago, Holly Bowers Ruben moved from California to New York, following an actor boyfriend to Brooklyn. The relationship didn’t last, but Ms. Ruben never moved back, although her mother, Marie-Louise Bowers, stayed out west.

That arrangement worked — mostly. “I did talk to my mom on a daily basis. That’s kind of the relationship we had, even when she was in California,” Ms. Ruben said.

But last year Ms. Bowers, 87, started having trouble getting around, and Ms. Ruben felt that helping her mother from across the country was at best a difficult prospect. In January, Ms. Ruben moved her mother to Sunrise at Mill Basin, in Brooklyn.

When Oiselle, a women’s running apparel company, started a brand ambassadorship program in 2010, it went with what other companies were doing at the time: Find people who love the company and run a lot and give them gear to wear at races and all over their blogs and social media feeds.

In 2015, that changed. Instead of a few hundred hand-picked brand ambassadors running races in Oiselle clothing, the company now has a program called Volée, which is made up of an army of about 4,000 women who pay $100 a year to be living, breathing, running, tweeting, Instagramming billboards for the brand, a membership that will open up to new members again on April 13th.

On Christmas Eve, I sat on the floor of my mom’s living room, her high school yearbook in my lap. After giggling at my teenaged parents in the Pep Club picture (sideburns for him, long, long hair for her), I flipped back to the sports section to see my dad’s picture on the baseball team.

Twelve pages over was the cross-country team; in it: 32 men, 0 women. For outdoor track: 41 men, 0 women. Two pages over, the indoor track team: 20 men, two women. Two women! I thought, but the caption explained their roles not as runners, but statisticians.

“It’s a shame too,” my mom said as she hung Christmas cards over the doorway. “I was really good at hurdles.”

In the middle of Kelly Drive, a Philadelphia Marathon volunteer in an electric blue shirt stands with both arms stretched wide, shouting, “Caffeine! Caffeine!”

The second half of the marathon is a loop in which runners pass her outbound between miles 16 and 17 and returning between miles 22 and 23. On her left and right, racers grab at the packets of Mocha Clif Shot Energy Gel. She holds them loose in her hands so participants can easily snatch those 1.2-ounce packets, each of which contains 50 milligrams (mg) of caffeine.

It isn’t known precisely why two runners died on this course in 2011, one in the full marathon and one in the half marathon.1 The marathoner fell right before reaching the finish line; the half marathoner collapsed after passing beyond the line. This specific form of death has become common enough that it’s now reported in the same format: name, age, where they collapsed, and race experience.

Most studies about why these deaths occur have focused on the heart, and how it changes during strenuous activity. But the packets handed out by that race volunteer could be another factor as to why these deaths are so similar, and why heart attacks claim runners who’d had no prior cardiac problem and who’d previously completed multiple marathons without incident.

“Caffeine! Caffeine!” she calls, and runners in neon shirts and shorts and gloves and compression socks snatch them from her hands.

For the last 10 years, technical writer Valerie Juzwiak’s health insurance has been a patchwork because of her temporary contract employment.

Sometimes an employer provides coverage; if not, Juzwiak buys her own, and premiums are as high as $600 a month.

Juzwiak, 52, of Somerset, is looking forward to less cobbled-together insurance coverage beginning next year. She’ll be one of the thousands of New Jersey residents buying a policy through the marketplace set up by the federal Affordable Care Act (ACA).

City inspector of building commits suicide on June 12, while excavator operator faces six counts of involuntary manslaughter; accident prompts changes in demolition job rules.

When Jen Singer was diagnosed with aggressive stage III B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2007, she wasn’t just concerned about dying. She was worried about how her diagnosis would affect her sons, then ages 8 and 10. How would she tell them she had cancer? How much should she tell them about her treatments? How would it affect their routines? Could she still help them with homework? Take them to swim practice while nauseous from chemo? How would she comfort them when she was terrified herself? What if they acted like nothing was wrong? What would she do if they asked if she might die when she didn’t know the answer herself? ​

Fans in this sports-obsessed city were divided over the Eagles’ signing of Michael Vick, but they were united in at least one emotion: shock.

“The whole city was full of people running outside to communicate with other people,” said Tim Quigley, 26, who was at a bar in Philadelphia for a bachelor party when he heard the news via text message.