Huy Mai
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Running with Family
(that’s me and my parents and my brother!!) Running alone has its own rhythm, but running with family feels different from the first step. The pace is never quite right. Someone starts too fast, someone else lags behind. Conversations interrupt breathing, laughter breaks form, and no one seems particularly concerned about splits or distance. At…
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Running and Realizing You Cannot Control Every Outcome
(the _deni_dictionary) I used to believe that if I did everything right, the run would reward me. Sleep well. Eat properly. Follow the plan. Show up consistently. In return, I expected good legs, smooth pacing, and steady improvement. When that happened, the logic felt confirmed. When it did not, frustration followed. Some days, despite doing…
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Running Past the Same Place Again and Again
(Bidadari Park, which I frequent at least twice a week!) I run the same routes so often that I could probably do them with my eyes closed. I know exactly where the pavement dips slightly. Where the streetlight flickers at night. Where the smell of fried food drifts out in the evenings and disappears by…
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Running on Days When You Would Rather Not
There is a very specific kind of run that almost never gets written about. It is not the triumphant long run. Not the race. Not the day everything clicks and you feel light and fast and invincible. It is the run you nearly do not go on. The excuses are never dramatic. You are not…
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Running Without Knowing Where It Is Going
There’s something special about East Coast Park in Singapore, the way you can wander off the established track and get lost somewhere you never intended to be. In fact … Some of my most memorable runs began without a plan. No distance goal. No route mapped out. No idea how long I would be gone.…
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Growth That Does Not Show Up on Paper
Some kinds of growth are easy to recognize. Grades rise, times drop, milestones line up neatly on a page. They are simple to explain and easy to prove. But a lot of the growth that matters most does not look like progress at all. It shows up quietly, in how you respond when things go…
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Youth Climate Essay Contest 2025 – Yale Climate Connections & Climate Cardinals
Turning Numbers Into Action When I think about what first made climate change real to me, it wasn’t a documentary or a news article. Instead, it was sitting in a classroom with fellow members of our school’s environmental club, staring at a spreadsheet, calculating greenhouse gas emissions from school lunches as part of our student-led…
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Green Stories Project “Epiphanies” Short Story Contest 2025
THE BLACKOUT DINNER Housefly News Network, Channel 2 ANCHOR:We now go to our correspondent, Griblo, with a follow-up on last week’s unusual events. GRIBLO (wings buzzing steadily):Thank you Hive. It has been one week since the blackout in Kitchen Sector 7112B. Power has long been restored, yet every evening the humans here continue a new…
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Being Alone
Running is often framed as a community sport. Group runs at dawn, race-day crowds, shared suffering and shared pride, Strava communities, etc. But most of my runs are quiet. Early mornings. Familiar routes. Long stretches of time spent alone with nothing but footsteps and breath. Sometimes music. Sometimes nothing at all. At first, that silence…
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What Hiking Ham Lon Mountain Taught Me
We started before sunrise, when the sky was still only beginning to brighten. The air was cool and calm, the kind that makes you breathe more deeply without thinking about it. Hàm Lợn Mountain stood quietly ahead of us, unassuming at first glance, yet clearly not something to be taken lightly. The trail rose quickly.…